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^MSes"sfoT'} HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES |°^"^c'^"* 



No. 995 



Francis W. Cushman 

(Late a Representative from WashinEton) 



MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 

Sixty-first Congress 
Second Session 



HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
April 2, 1910 



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TABLE OF CONTENTvS. 



Proceedings in the House 5 

Address of Mr. Humphrey, of Washington ') 

Address of Mr. Cannon, of Illinois ._ 17 

Address of Mr. McCredie, of Washington :^ i 

Address of Mr. Adamson, of Georgia -'8 

Address of Mr. Wanger, of Pennsylvania .13 

Address of Mr. Poindexter, of Washington .^7 

Address of Mr. Morrison, of Indiana 40 

Address of Mr. Hamilton, of Michigan 4,? 

Address of Mr. Clark, of Missouri 48 

Address of Mr. Lowden, of Illinois . . . .- .=io 

Address of Mr. Knowland, of California 60 

Address of Mr. Stevens, of Minnesota fij 

Address of Mr. Wickersham, of Alaska (17 

Address of Mr. Olcott, of New York 69 

Address of Mr. Englebright, of California 81 

Proceedings in the Senate 84 

Address of Mr. Piles, of Washington 86 

Address of Mr. Beveridge, of Indiana 92 

Address of Mr. Clapp, of Minnesota 99 

Address of Mr. Carter, of Montana 104 

Address of Mr. Chamberlain, of Oregon 1 1 1 

Address of Mr. Burkett, of Nebraska 115 

Address of Mr. Burton, of Ohio 1 2.5 

Address of Mr. Hughes, of Colorado 1 30 

Address of Mr. Jones, of Washington ". i .^7 

3 



0, nr n 



I 




HON. FRANCIS W.CUSHMAN 



Death of Hon. Francis W. Cushman 



PROCEEDINGS IN THE HOUSE 

Thursday, July 8, igog. 

The House met at 12 o'clock noon. 

The Chaplain, Rev. Henry N. Couden, D. D., offered the fol- 
lowing prayer : 

Our Father in heaven, we come to Thee under the shadow of 
a great cloud, yet unshaken in our faith and confidence in Thy 
boundless love. Thou knowest how strong are the ties of friend- 
ship woven 'twixt the Members of this House, so when one is 
taken from our midst, though it is to a larger life in one of the 
"many mansions," our hearts are rent with grief. But we 
thank Thee, our Father, that we were permitted to know and 
love Francis W. Cushman, one of nature's noblemen; strong, 
brilliant, versatile of mind; warm, loving, genial of heart; pure, 
spotless of character. He gave himself without reserve to his 
people, his State, his Nation, and leaves behind him an enviable 
reputation. 

We can not solve the mysteries of life or death, but we can 
trust Thee; be this our solace; and may the hope which burns 
bright and beckons us onward to the realms of immortal life 
comfort the broken-hearted mother; the brother, who will miss 
the warm handclasp and the welcome voice; and, O Father, be 
Thou strength and comfort to the little woman who has walked 
faithfully by his side in the tender ties of wedlock, in sunshine 
and in shadow, in victory and in defeat, in joy and in sorrow; 
and bring us all together, we beseech Thee, sometime, some- 

5 



6 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 

where, to part no more, and eons of praise we will ever give to 
Thee. 

Behold, we know not anything; 

We can but trust that good shall fall 

At last — far off — at last, to all. 
And every winter change to spring. 

For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, for- 
ever and ever. Amen. 

Ur. Humphrey, of Washington. Mr. Speaker, it is with deep- 
est sorrow that I now perform my sad duty and announce the 
death of my colleague and my friend, the Hon. Fr.\ncis W. 
Cushman. Here in this House, where he was greatly honored 
and esteemed, he had just entered upon his sixth consecutive 
term when the dread summons that must come to us all came 
to him. At some future time I shall ask that a day be set apart 
that fitting tribute may be paid to the life, character, and 
public services of this brilliant young man, who for many years 
with exceptional fidelity and distinguished abiHty ser\-ed his 
State and country. 

I now offer the following resolutions. 

The Speaker. The Clerk will report the resolutions. 

The Clerk read as follows : 

House resolution S6. 

Resolved, That the House has heard with profound sorrow of the death 
of Hon. Francis W. Cushm.^n, late a Representative from the State of 
Washington; 

Resolved, That the Sergeant-at-Arms of the House be authorized and 
directed to take charge of the body of the deceased, and to make such 
arrangements as may be necessary for the funeral, and that the necessary 
expenses in connection therewith be paid out of the contingent fund of 

the House; 

Resolved, That the Clerk communicate these resolutions to the Senate, 
and transmit a copy thereof to the family of the deceased ; 

Resolved, That as a further mark of respect this House do now adjoura 



Proceedings of the House 7 

The Speaker. The question is on agreeing to the resolutions. 

The question was taken, and the resolutions were unanimously 

agreed to. 

Accordingly (at 12 o'clock and 12 minutes p. m.) the House 

adjourned. 

Tuesday, March 8, iqio. 

The House met at 12 o'clock noon. 

Mr. Humphrey, of Washington. ;Mr. Speaker, I ask unani- 
mous consent that Saturday, April 2, at 2 o'clock p. m., be 
devoted to exercises on the life, character, and public services 
of the late Hon. Francis W. Cushman, a Representative from 
the State of Washington. 

The Speaker. The gentleman from Washington asks unani- 
mous consent that Saturday, April 2, at 2 o'clock, be set apart 
for memorial services on the life and character of the late 
Representative Francis W. Cushman. Is there objection ? 

There was no objection. 

S.\TURDAV, April 2, IQIO. 

The House met at 12 o'clock m. 

Prayer by the Chaplain, Rev. Henry N. Couden, D. D., as 
follows : 

O Thou infinite and eternal spirit, God, our Father, whose 
omnipotent and omniscient love hast called us into being and 
filled us with an immortal soul. We bless Thy holy name that 
Thou hast hidden in every heart an ideal, which is ever struggling 
toward light and purity, that the good men do lives after them 
to inspire others; for all the world loves a good man. 

We thank Thee that this deUberative body will pause and 
turn aside to-day from its arduous duties in memory of one who 
for many years occupied a conspicuous place as a Member of 
this House, and who by his genial character, devotion to duty, 
won for himself the esteem and love of all with whom he came 
in contact. What will be said of him will add nothing to what 



8 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 

he was, but we pray most fervently that this act of respect 
may add somewhat to our life and character. 

Comfort and bless those who mourn him, and help them to 
look forward to a brighter realm, where they shall dwell with 
him forever. And everlasting praise be Thine, through Jesus 
Christ our Lord. Amen. 

The Speaker. The Clerk will read the special order. 

The Clerk read as follows : 

On motion of Mr. Humphrey, of Washington, by unanimous consent. 
Ordered, That Saturday, April 2, after 2 o'clock p. m., be set apart for 

eulogies on the life, character, and public services of Hon. Fr.-\ncis \V. 

Cushman, late a Representative from the State of Washington. 

Mr. Humphrey, of Washington. :Mr. Speaker, I offer the 
following resolutions. 

The Clerk read as follows: 

Resolved, That the business of the House be now suspended that oppor- 
tunity may be given for tributes to the memory of Hon. Francis W. 
Cushman, late a Member of this House from the State of Washington. 

Resolved, That as a particular mark of respect to the memory of the 
deceased and in recognition of his distinguished public career the House, 
at the conclusion of these exercises, shall stand adjourned. 

Resolved, That the Clerk communicate these resolutions to the Senate. 

Resolved, That the Clerk send a copy of these resolutions to the family 
of the deceased. 

The question was taken, and the resolutions were unanimously 
agreed to. 



Address of Mi. Humphrey, of IVashington 



MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 



Address of Mr. Humphrey, of Washington 

Mr. Speaker: I come here to-day to pay my tribute of love 
to the memory of him who was my colleague and my friend. 
He of whom we talk to-day has walked the way of all the world. 
He has reached the place where every path of life must end. He 
has crossed that unknown, silent, shoreless, sunless sea of death 
whose motionless bosom has never yet been shadowed by return- 
ing sail. Just when the sun was highest, just at noon, in the 
very zenith of his strength, just when his brilliant powers were 
greatest, when he had mounted high ambition's ladder, the 
dread summons came. 

Again the question. Why should this splendid man, all 
equipped for life, be stricken in his strongest hour when the 
world was crying for his help, while the weak, the useless, and 
the burdensome remain? This question shall be asked and 
remain unanswered so long as life and love and death shall be. 
While we are bowed with grief at his untimely death let us 
hope that it was but the opening of the door to a wider world, 
a grander life. 

We do not know; we can not tell whether life or death be 
the greater blessing. We do not know; we can not tell which 
is fortune's favorite, the dimpled babe that dies in the arms 
of love, or he who lives through the weary years bearing the 
burdens and the trials of life until the shadows have lengthened 
far toward the East. 

For six consecutive terms Fr.^ncis W. Cushm.\n was elected 
a Member of this House from the State of Washington. Five 



lo Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 

times from the State at large. The last time from the second 
district. No State ever had a more faithful Representative. 
No man ever to a greater extent commanded the confidence 
and the esteem of those he serv'ed. No request, however insig- 
nificant, but received his attention. 

The relation of Mr. Cushman, Mr. Jones, and myself was 
unusual and especially close. For six years we were the only 
Representatives from our State, and all were elected by the 
State at large, a condition without precedent in the history of 
the Republic. The interest of each was the interest of all. 
There was never the slightest misunderstanding, disagreement, 
doubt, or distrust among us. No three men ever worked in 
more perfect harmony or greater trust or with higher mutual 
confidence. During all that time our vote was never divided on 
a single important proposition. No act ever occurred to mar in 
the least degree the confidence that existed. Of this relation 
the Members of this House have often spoken in terms of appre- 
ciated praise. To the two who yet live the record of those years 
must ever remain a proud and precious memory, a recollection 
of an association as true, as close, as confidential as ever 
comes to men in public life. These men were more than col- 
leagues. Thev had tried and trusted each other in all things. 
Only the awful shadow could break the sacred ties of this 
friendship. I have always believed that the people of Wash- 
ington reaped a large reward from this harmonious action. 
Thev stamped it with approval by unanimous nominations and 
by elections practically without opposition, and by sending Mr. 
Jones to the Senate — an honor that they would undoubtedly 
have conferred upon Mr. Cushman had he Hved. 

About Mr. Cushman's early hfe there was nothing prophetic 
of his future. In his youth he walked in the humblest ways. 
He knew what it was to be poor. He knew what it was to work 



Address of Mr. Humphrey, of Washington 1 1 

with his hands. He knew what it was to toil that he might eat 
bread. He knew the sting and spur and curse of poverty. He 
touched Hfe on many sides. He traveled many paths. From 
these hard experiences and environments was made and molded 
that rugged character that met with unyielding courage all the 
duties and battles of a grandly successful life. 

This bare-footed boy, working in the fields, dreamed dreams; 
his brain was filled with pictures, pictures of public life, of 
service to his country, of the Halls of Congress. Neither pov- 
erty nor adversity nor circumstance could shake the faith of 
this bov in these dreams. He set his face toward his goal and 
never did he for a moment turn aside or falter or grow faint or 
lose faith. This boy lived to have a reputation as wide as his 
countrv, to become the most popular man of a great State, a 
leader in the greatest body of men in all the world. He helped 
to shape some of the most important legislation that has been 
written on the statute books of his country for the last thirty 
vears. And when he spoke it was "listening senates to com- 
mand." He kept the faith. He fought the fight. He did the 
best that was within him, and greater than this no man can do. 
He died loved and honored by thousands. By his own unaided 
efiforts, by his genius, by his industry, by his integrity, by his 
own work alone, he won success. His life is an inspiration and 
a star to every ragged boy whose heart throbs with ambition's 
hope. 

This man was true in all the relations of life. He was true to 
himself, to his convictions, to his country, to his friends, and to 
those he loved. He lived a clean life. He did the right. He 
was not afraid. He walked with the conscious strength of 
honest purpose. 

A more congenial, kindly, companionable soul never dwelt in 
human clav. Of all the many jewels that adorned the crown 



12 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 

of this splendid man, tiie most beautiful of all was his devotion 
to his mother. All the current of his life seemed to center 
around her. And fully was this devotion merited and returned. 
All great mothers do not have great sons, but all great sons do 
have great mothers. This is the law eternal, fixed by the 
Infinite Wisdom. 

He was a man of undaunted courage. He nev'er explained or 
apologized for his position. He never hesitated to give to speech 
what his heart believed. He never trimmed or evaded. When 
occasion demanded he was a superb fighter. In debate he was 
always an opponent to be feared. He tried his steel against the 
ablest in this House, and in all his long career no man met him 
in contest who did not bear the marks of the conflict. He 
made use of all the weapons of the orator, but sarcasm and 
invective he used but rarely. 

In the marshaling of facts and in reasoning he was strong. 
In statement he was brilliant and original. In humorous illus- 
tration he stands among the greatest orators this Nation has 
produced. His stories were as illuminating as those of Lincoln. 
As a campaign speaker he was the peer of any man in the 
country. His retorts and witticisms left no sting. Many of his 
warmest friends in this House are those who have been the 
subject of his humor. Seldom, indeed, did he dip his shafts in 
poison. Strong and courageous as he was in debate, as deter- 
mined and bold a fighter as he was, yet he was so generous and 
so fair that he never made an enemy. When he died every 
man in this House was his friend. 

Every beat of his heart was patriotic. He loved his country 
with a devotion that was beyond all selfishness. With him his 
country's flag was always first. To him that flag was the 
emblem of highest human hope. To him that flag held the 
destinv of the race. This love of country was so marked as to 



Address of Mr. Humphrey, of Washington 13 

be noted by everyone who knew him well. His mother, so like 
the son, knowing what his dearest wish would be if he could 
speak, when her loyal heart was breaking with her great grief, 
wired to me: 

Have Frank's casket wrapped in his country's flag. 

And so it was, and so he was buried, as he had often asked 
to be, -with the Stars and Stripes, his country's flag, about him. 

This broad-minded, many-sided man was touched and 
charmed by the beautiful and grand in nature. He loved the 
fields and woods; especially did he love the shadowy depths of 
the trackless forests, the turbulent and dashing stream, with its 
placid pools, its foaming gorges, its wild rapids, and the soli- 
tude and grandeur of the great and rugged mountains. These 
ever brought to him recollections upon which he loved to dream 
and dwell. 

He despised deceit and demagogy in every shape. Especially 
did he despise the indiscriminate vilification of public men. 
He knew that the unjust denunciation of the honest man often 
becomes the shield of the scoundrel. He knew that these 
attacks keep from public life many of the very men the Nation 
needs the most. He knew that an honest life is often no pro- 
tection against the polluted lips of slander. He knew that too 
often the injury done to a public man by the publication of a 
lie can never be overcome. He knew that too often against 
these hired assassins of character the honest man is helpless. 
He hated these detractors of public men as traitors to his 
country. 

He knew how to live and how to die. He met the responsi- 
bilities of life with confidence. He died without fear. His 
faith was not cramped or warped or dwarfed by any creed. 
His was the religion of life, not the religion of death. He be- 
lieved in honest living, in good deeds. His was the religion of 



14 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 

joy and happiness, of sunshine and help. His was the religion 
of hope. He believed that no one truly lives who lives for self 
alone. He believed that — 

He's true to God who's true to man whenever wrong is done 
To the humblest and the weakest 'neath the all-beholding sun. 
When Love first looked upon the pallid face of Death, then 
first was born the hope of immortality. As the first death was, 
so the last shall be. Is nothing immortal? Is death the uni- 
versal conqueror? Is the fate of man told by the sad song of 
the shepherd as he sings: 

Torn and bleeding he goes; and at last arriveth 
There where the pathway 
And his struggles alike have ending; 
Where yawns the abyss, bottomless, terrible — 
There he flings himself down, and findeth oblivion. 
That the dead should live again is not more mysterious than 
that they have lived. That a time should come when we should 
cease to be is not more mysterious than that a time was when 
we were not. Death is not more mysterious than life. 

What means this infinite air, and what the depths of the heavens? 
What is the meaning of all this solitude boundless? 
And I, what am I? 

Reason has robbed death of many of its terrors. Even if 
death shall be the end, who shall say which is best— life with 
its sunshine and shadows, its griefs and sorrows, its hopes and 
joys, its agonies and tears, or death with its perfect peace, its 
dreamless rest, its changeless eternity? We know that our 
loved ones dead shall never again feel the agonies of pain. 
Never again shall their eyes be wet with tears. Their hearts 
shall ache no more. 

I sometimes feel that the constant presence of death makes 
us hold our loved ones closer to us here. I sometimes feel that 
death "treads from out the paths between our hearts the weeds 



Address of Mr. Humphrey, of Washington 15 

of selfishness and hate. " Does not the ever-present shadow of 
the parting make more true and hoi)' the love we bear each other 
now? 

Shall we meet again? Unless we do there can be no here- 
after. Better oblivion, better the perfect peace, better the 
dreamless rest, unless we can know and be again with those we 
love and who love us. Through all the ages love has cried aloud 
this awful question, but through all the ages, from all the 
countless dead, there has come no reply. 

The wisdom of all the ages has added nothing to our knowl- 
edge. 

Mythology records that centuries before the meek and lowly 
Nazarene walked the earth and dwelt with the children of men, 
that the life of the young King of Argos was demanded as a 
sacrifice by the gods. As he was preparing to comply with that 
dread command, his young and beautiful wife, in the anguish 
and despair of her breaking heart, asked that dreadful question 
that has found an echo in every soul that ever lived and loved 
and saw their loved ones die, that question that will be asked 
as long as love and hope and life and death shall be, as long as 
love with breaking heart shall stand beside an open grave, "Tell 
me! Tell me! Shall we meet again?" He replied: 

I have asked that dreadful question of the hills 
That look eternal; of the flowing streams 
That lucid flow forever; of the stars. 
Amid whose field of azure my raised spirit 
Hath trod in glory; all are dumb, but now. 
While I thus gaze upon thy living face, 
I feel the love that kindles through its beauty 
Can never wholly perish. We shall meet again. 

To that hope, to that belief the human soul will cling forever. 
So long as love shall live, so long shall hope hold out the 
promise of immortality. The belief of immortality is as deep 
as humanity, as eternal as the race. 



i6 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 

I can not believe that the yearnings, the aspirations, the 
desires of the pure, noble heart will remain unsatisfied forever. 
I can not believe that the light of a grand and splendid intellect 
goes out in oblivion. I can not believe that the end of a great 
and fearless soul is eternal night. 

Behold, we know not anything; 

We can but trust that good shall fall 

At last — far off — at last, to all, 
And every winter change to spring. 

And now to him I loved, to him with whom I was so closely 
associated for so many years, farewell ! Yonder in the beautiful 
city of Tacoma, in the shadows of the great forests, by the 
placid waters, surrounded b\- the rugged peaks white with the 
eternal snows, amid the surroundings he loved so well, he for- 
ever sleeps the dreamless sleep of perfect peace. He left to his 
country and to those he loved the priceless heritage of a noble 
life. 

The last time we ever met in life, the last time our hands were 
ever pressed in friendship's sacred clasp, my parting words 
were, "Good-bv, Fr.\nk, until we meet again." And these 
shall be mv parting words now and forever. Brave and gener- 
ous soul, my colleague, my comrade, and my friend, good-by, 
"Good-bv, Fr.ank, until ue meet again." 



Address of Mr. Cannon, of Illinois 17 



Address of Mr. Cannon, of Illinois 

Mr. Speaker: In the busy life here I have had no time to 
put in black and white fitting words of tribute to the memory 
of the late Representative Cushman; yet, having served with 
him during all his service in the House, my heart prompts me 
to say a word concerning our former colleague, his service in 
the House, his sturdy manhood, and invincible courage. I 
measure my words when I say that perhaps one of the most 
trying places in the country is to serve as a Representative in 
this House, the popular body, that comes in touch with the 
people every two years either for approval or disapproval. 
My observation in all Congresses in which I have served has 
been, as a general rule, Members who represent the people 
from time to time on both sides of the House come with a 
sincere desire to properly represent the constituencies that 
sent them, coupled with a wish also to represent trulv all the 
people of the Republic in legislation that is to be enacted or 
defeated, according, to the best judgment of the Representative 
or Representatives. There is, however, present with us a 
disposition to please the particular constituency whose power 
of attorney we hold, because to that constituency we are pri- 
marily accountable. This being a Government by a majority, 
through parties of almost equal strength, a change of 2 or 3 
per cent from one party to the other makes a political revolu- 
tion; so that not only have we present with us the patriotic 
purpose of serving the best interests of the country, but also 
the desire to be personally indorsed. At times there is great 
temptation to try to please the 3 per cent that may change, 
taking it for granted that the balance of the party constituency 
will be for us anyway. 

S094S — II. Doc. 995, 61-2 2 



1 8 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 

I doubt if there is a man in the House that does not take an 
account of stock, if not every day, every week, of his Repre- 
sentative life, with a view not only to the good he has accom- 
plished in his service, but also to his indorsement by his con- 
stituency. 

Mr. Cushman, I think, had as little regard for mere popular 
disapproval abounding in hysteria or based upon misinforma- 
tion as any Representative within my knowledge. He was 
broad, patriotic, courageous, able. Sometimes in the contests 
in the House his tongue was sharp, abounding in sarcasm, but it 
did not give utterance to false statement, nor was it the servant 
of a malicious mind. 'He was not only patriotic and courageous, 
but a partisan. He had red corpuscles in his blood. Among 
men of many minds there have always been those who in public 
service were not- very good legislators so far as the details of 
legislation are concerned, but who have found their sphere of 
usefulness in helping to make public sentiment. Mr. Cushm.^n 
had due regard for public sentiment. Sometimes he ran counter 
to it. He did not, unless it met his judgment, bow to it. He 
was one of those who, if he beUeved the public to be wrong, 
would do all he could to correct public sentiment — one who 
would say, " If I fail, I had better fail in a proper effort to cor- 
rect wrong sentiment than to succeed through bowing to it." 

As we all recollect, perhaps there never was a more courage- 
ous man upon the floor of this House than was Fr.ancis W. 
Cushman. 

It was frequently said that he resembled Mr. Lincoln. He 
did. I was acquainted with .Mr. Lincoln. In features, Mr. 
Cushman resembled him. He had a history much like Mr. 
Lincoln's, if you make allowance for the times in which Lin- 
coln lived and in which Cushman lived. He was a son of 
toil, a child of poverty; not poverty crossed with wastefulness, 



Address of Mr. Cannon, of Illinois 19 

but a child of honorable poverty. Being good stuff, under the 
hand of necessity, whether on the farm or wherever he was, he 
was a breadwinner. He lived in the sweat of his face. We 
talk much about poverty. Where the poverty, so-called, is an 
honest povertv, where it begets industr\-, physical and mental, 
it is riches, not poverty. I do not pity the boy, whether on the 
farm, in the mine, or wherever his lot may be cast, who comes 
under the hand of necessity that he may eat bread. If there is 
good stuff in him, he develops character, strength, physical 
and mental. 

In mv judgment, measuring my words, the people to be pitied 
are the so-called children of fortune, who live without toil and 
without effort. With rare exceptions, under those conditions, 
thev retrograde rather than advance. 

There was good stuff in Fr.ancis W. Cushm.^n. In his case, 
as in many others constantly occurring day by dav, we can 
not quite understand why, under universal law, in full man- 
hood and usefulness he was called to cross over. We never shall 
know. In my own judgment, there is no special providence in 
either success or failure. In my own judgment, under universal 
law, we work out our own salvation for our benefit and that 
of our fellows; and whether we fall in youth, in middle life, 
or in old age, we know not why we live to old age or die voung 
or in middle life. In the case of ^Ir. Cushman, dving in mid- 
dle life as he did, he yet contributed to the Republic far more 
than one man's share for its benefit. 

We can not tell as to the future any more than we can tell 
as to the past. You can not conceive of an indestructible 
entity having had a beginning. It is a great mysterv. You 
may speculate about it, but you never can settle it. 

I think it is more and more the consensus of opinion that 
each unit makes its own place here and hereafter. To me there 



20 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 

is great comfort in some of the spiritual interpretation of Holy 
Writ given bv Swedenborg. He said, in his divine love and 
wisdom : 

It was given to me to be caught up into the spiritual heaven, and I 
saw one who was counted a saint on earth, who had just died, demand 
entrance into heaven. On entering, lieing informed that heaven was 
denied to no one, he fell down headlong until he found the place that 
would be most comfortable to him, according to his character and his 
loves. 

That was plausible and comforting, whether correct or not. 
From mv acquaintance with Francis W. Cushman, whether it 
shall be mv fortune to fall down or to go up in the hereafter, if 
I shall find the place where he resides, that will be to me the 
best possible heaven I could find. 

As to the future it is a matter of faith. Lowell expresses it 
in a sentence or two in one of his essays, in which he says: 

Every mortal man of us holds stock in one great public debt that is 
absolutelv sure of payment, and that is the debt which the Creator of 
the universe owes to the universe that he created. I shall not sell my 
shares in a panic. 



Address oj Mr. McCredie, of Washington 21 



Address of Mr. McCredie, of Washington. 

Mr. SpEaki;k: It is with niingk-d sorrow and pride I rise to 
pay tribute to the memory of a departed friend, the Hon. 
Fr.w'CIS \V. Cushm.^n. Every eye of his innumerable friends 
filled with overflowing moisture of sorrow when the sad news 
came that Fr.\n'k's soul had taken its immortal flight. Death 
had claimed its victim. Here was a young man blighted in 
the strength of his manhood. It is with sorrow that Cush.man 
should die at all, but it is particularly with the deepest of 
regret that he should have died at an age when his genius had 
not unfolded all its greatness. It is very gratifying, however, 
to know that the splendid reputation borne by him in his home 
State is fully shared by his associates in this honorable legis- 
lative body. His whole nature longed for usefulness. He 
craved the love of the human race. In these things he achieved 
his ambition. I doubt if any man ever lived as active a life, 
declaring his principles fearlessly for so many years, who 
left behind so many warm friends and so few enemies as did 
our beloved Cushmax. 

He was one of the whitest souls that this wearv old earth 
has ever seen. Simplicity, sincerity, imagination, heart, and 
conscience were wondert'ully developed and blended in him. 
Springing as he did from the most ordinary ancestry, it is 
hard to imagine whence came his unusual qualities. He was 
surely the "Century's Aloe" of his family. 

He was born on the 8th day of May, 1867, at Brighton, in 
the county of Washington, State of Iowa, and died of pneu- 
monia in New York City, July 6, 1909, leaving to mourn his 
untimely death a loving wife, an affectionate mother, and a 
great array of friends. 



22 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushmnn 

Born in poverty, reared and educated in poverty, he never 
knew the warmth of the sunshine of property inheritance. He 
was never idle. The playtime of life to him was short. He 
was a water boy on the railroad during the summer, attending 
school in the winter. 

His first promotion was to that of a common laborer and sec- 
tion hand. Later, at i6 years of age, he moved to Wyoming 
and assumed the dignity of a cowboy on a ranch, a lumber 
jack in a sawmill, finally reaching his highest distinction in 
that State — a country school-teacher. During his idle time he 
studied law; was admitted and commenced the practice of law 
in the State of Nebraska — that is, he hung out his shingle and 
sat down quietly to contemplate. In 1891 he moved to the 
State of Washington and opened a law office in the city of 
Tacoma. Thereafter he was active and successful. 

In 1896 in the State of Washington there was a coalition of 
three distinct political parties — the Democrats, the Populists, 
and the rebellious Republicans, styled the Free Silver Repub- 
licans. It was an exciting campaign, but the combination was 
too much for the regular Republicans. The electors for A\'il- 
liam Jennings Bryan won. The State went Democratic by an 
overwhelming vote. They elected their Congressmen — Jones 
and Lewis. The state legislature selected a Democratic Sen- 
ator — the Hon. George W. Turner. Politics in our State was 
in a demoralized condition. In 1898 the Republicans, with but 
little hope, assembled in Tacoma to select a ticket to wage 
political war against the successful triumvirate amalgamation. 
Both of the Democratic Congressmen renominated were popular 
men and strong speakers. There were but two Republicans to 
undertake the herculean task of combating them. They were 
two voung lawyers, one from the city of Tacoma and the other 
from east of the Cascade Mountains. These two young men 
with vigor campaigned the State, and, contrary to all expecta- 



Address of Mr. McCrcdie, of Washington 23 

tions, the Republicans were successful b\' a small majority. 
The wit. humor, and logic of these young men, Demosthenes 
and Cicero, were too effective. One now graces the legislative 
hall at the other end of this Capicol building — Senator \\\ L. 
Jones. The remains of the other lie resting peacefully in his 
grave at Tacoma, in the State of Washington, the subject of 
this theme, Fr.\ncis W. Cush.m.ax. 

After his first election Cushm.\n practically had no opposi- 
tion. The office of Representative was his as long as he desired 
it. Had he lived and this fall entered the senatorial race of 
our State he would have been a formidable candidate. 

In his mind, over the most steadfast purpose, continuallv 
played the light of pleasant fancy. His spirit of helpfulness 
was first shown by the early labors that he tells of; the money 
thus earned gave him the keenest pleasure to spend on others. 
Manv a living man can bear testimony to the fact that this 
principle never deserted him. When he set out to aid a man in 
what he thought a just cause, it was not in a perfunctor\-, 
casual, half-hearted way that these promises are sometimes 
kept, but he worked just as hard in the man's absence and 
among his enemies as in his presence and that of his friends. 

In the city of Tacoma, in the midst of an appalling amount 
of work, learning that a citizen, fatally ill, had a mortgage of 
Si ,000 on his home, he went out single handed and in one day 
secured the amount and cleared the property. That evening, 
how tired he was, but hap]3y withal to establish the truth of 
his belief that mankind and human nature are all right in mat- 
ters of charity and mercy. All that is needed is the suggestion 
that things should be done. Once when told that a charitable 
act of his own was misplaced, that he had bestowed his goods 
unworthily, he said: 

There are two effects in this transactitm, that upon him and that upon 
me; whatever he may feel, nothing can take away the effect upon me. 



24 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 

Personally he was the most simple and frugal of men, but 
generous to a fault — even prodigal in his charity. He had abso- 
lutely no prejudice based on rank or color, seeing clearly 
through the envelope of circumstances down to the human unit. 

One Christmas evening, straying into a bookstore to pick up 
a belated remembrance, he saw standing on the edge of a dense 
crowd a small colored boy. Grasping one of those wonderful 
story books in which children delight, he satisfied the eager, 
hungry wish for possession on the child's face. Speaking of 
this, he said : 

No race problem vexed my mind, and for that one Christmas gift that 
I then made I Uft my face for the benediction of the God who made us both. 

He was capable of very keen suffering and had more than 
his share of crushing disappointment, but as the "chord of 
self" was smitten and "passed in trembling out of sight," in 
place of embittering, the sorrow seemed to sweeten his char- 
acter. He very rarely made adverse criticism. Sometimes when 
in his work for others it was necessary that he secure the coop- 
eration of those who claimed his friendship and aid, that tender, 
sympathic, noble heart was sadly wrung by cold, indifferent 
interest. He would say : 

Oh, if he just had a Utile red blood. 

\'ery few have as little false pride or fear of the public oijinion 
that is based upon position. Speaking of being once assailed 
by a cabal that intimated to him that unless he acquiesced in 
their plans he might lose his place at Washington, he looked 
straight into the eye of the tempter and remarked, "I don't 
have to go to Congress." Afterwards, relating this, a 'islow, 
wise smile" came over his face at the thought of how suddenly 
and completely the argument of the adversary vanished. 

His lively imagination enabled hini to put himself in the place 
of the helpless. His great, warm, human heart sympathized 



Address of Mr. McCrcdie, of ll'ashuiqlou 



-'J 



and his compelling conscience never let him rest until he had 
made every effort possible for the relief of the sufferer. Often 
his eyes filled witii tears on his return from some excursion into 
the backwoods, where he had found some poor old couple, who 
may have "crossed the Plains," shriveled and worn bv vears of 
hard work and privation, still clinging to the poor little farm 
"whose chief improvement was and is a mortgage." 

CusHMAX was styled by his friends "Abe Lincoln Xo. 2," as 
he, like the great emancipator, was tall, lean, lank, homely, and 
full of wit and humor; but his strong, ugly face was a face of 
intellectual beauty. He was the life of society and always enter- 
taining. A great story-teller, he himself generally being the 
butt of the fun. Wit flowed from him like a clear brook rip- 
pling down the mountain side, cool and refreshing. 

When scarcely 2 years old he lay in his mother's arms 
gasping in the throes of membranous croup, now called diph- 
theria. Beside the mother sat the doctor, watch in hand, giv- 
ing him e\ery three minutes a few drops of some powerful drug. 
When this had gone on to about the tenth dose, baby Cushman 
looked up into his mother's eyes with a twinkle, saying, "Mama, 
you may have that one." 

I remember one of the many stories Cushman told on him- 
self. After he was elected to Congress, and while serving his 
term, he met in the city of Omaha, in the vState of Nebraska, an 
old friend, who was one of his cowboy chums in Wyoming. 
After an exchange of formal greeting, the cowbov said: 

Frank, what are you doing? 

Cushman straightened up that elongated form of his and said: 

Well, Bill, it is my pleasure to inform you that I now have the great 
honor and distinction of being one of the Representatives of the State <if 
Washington in the great Congress of the United States, and I am now on 
my way to Washington, D. C. 



26 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 

The rough and ready cowboy gazed at his old friend and 
associate of the years gone by in profound astonishment, and 
then ejaculated: 

My God! Is it possible, Frank? Ten years ago 1 thought of going to 
the State of Washington; now I wish I had gone. 

I clipped from the Saturday Evening Post of a few weeks ago 
this story on the late humorist of the House of Representatives: 
Cushman was in one of the House elevators a year or two ago 
with a man he did not know. "Where are you from?" Cush- 
man asked. "Oh, I'm from the State of Washington." "Is 
that so? Know any of the Congressmen from that State ;>" 
"Oh, yes; I know them all." "Know Cushman?" "Sure, I 
do. I know him well. He is an old pal of mine." "Well," 
said Cushman, "they tell me Cushman is the homeliest man in 
Congress. Say, friend, is he any homelier than I am?" The 
stranger took a long look. "Hell!" he said, "Cushman's got 
you skinned a mile." 

If there was one quaUty in Cush.man more pronounced than 
anv other, it was his great admiration for his dear mother. 
He alwavs spoke of her in the tenderest terms, both in public 
and private life. She was his idol. There is no word that 
touches the fountain of love like the word "mother." Her 
love alwavs entwines her children. No matter to what depth 
of degradation they may sink, she still loves, protects, and 
forgives them. An appeal to her in distress always finds a 
ready response. The love for mother never dies. 

Cushman was always full of consideration for his mother. 
From his childhood, through his entire life and until his feeble 
fingers scrawled her name, his very last written word, in an 
attempt to send a cheerful telegram that weakness forced him 
to dictate, he never forgot to enrich his mother's hfe with his 
affections. Never was a more loyal, devoted son. Those 



Address of Mr. McCredie, of l\'aslii)ujton 27 

wonderful, glorious eyes never rested upon his mother but with 
the most tender, loving look, and that "tuneful tongue" never 
spoke flippantlv or criticisingly to her. 

She always gave him sympathy and encouragement. When 
he came in warm with struggle, remembering the old Spartan 
mother, she said: "And what is the position of the shield?" 
He smilingly answered: "I still bear it." 

He never forgot the story of Aladdin's lamp, and when he 
would surprise his mother with some unexpected pleasure, he 
would remark: "You see I have been rubbing the lamp." 

He left no children to enjoy his accomplishments. His 
wedded life was congenial. He enjoyed the affection and 
companionship of his excellent wife. They were together in 
his travels. He w-as always attentive and thoughtful of her. 

CusHMAN admired Tennyson's poems, and was particularly 
fond of a passage in The Passing of Arthur. King Arthur 
was given a pearl-handled sword by a mermaid and he carried 
it into battle, but was mortally wounded. He forced his ser\-ant 
to throw the sword into the water to see what would happen. 
The same fair hand that gave it to him reached up and caught 
it and then disappeared. Arthur's dying words alwavs impressed 

CuSHMAN — 

But now farewell. 1 am going a long way. 

With these thou seest — if indeed I go 

(For all my mind is clouded with a doubt) — 

To the island-valley of Avilion, 

Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow, 

Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies 

Deep meadowed, happy, fair with orchard lawns 

And bowery hollows crowned with summer sea. 

Where I will heal me of my grievous wound. 



28 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 



Address of Mr. Adamson, of Georgia 

Mr. Speaker: I never knew Francis W. Cushman until he 
was elected to Congress in 1898. He sprang suddenly into 
fame, a national character, distinguished as the man who 
defeated James Hamilton Lewis. Lewis was a great deal more 
conspicuous than the Democracy of the State of Washington, 
and as for that matter, more conspicuous than the Democracy 
of some other States. The public was ready to believe that 
the man who could defeat James Hamilton Lewis after his 
brilliant career of one term in Congress could do anything, and 
Francis W. Cushman, by his performances, well-nigh made 
good that expression of confidence. 

He served several terms on the great Committee on Interstate 
and Foreign Commerce, and during my service with him on 
that committee I enjoyed an opportunity to estimate his char- 
acter and capacitv. Prolonged acquaintance only increased 
my admiration for his wonderful gifts. 

While he was a man of unbounded humor, his wit was not of 
the vitriolic kind, which left wounds and bitterness, but of that 
milder, kinder tvpe, which all could enjoy, and which pleased 
even its victims. Neither did his wit and humor doom him to 
the common fate of hur.iorists. Generally men who indulge in 
wit and jokes lose their influence with their fellow-men, are never 
expected to be serious, and if they make a sensible speech or 
do a sensible thing, receive no credit for it, but, on the other 
hand, usually suffer from actual resentment for disappointing 
the expectation of a joke. When Frank Cushman told a joke 
it always pointed a moral and most admirably adorned a tale. 
There was a good reason for every joke, and a good reason in 
every one he used, and every one was effective. They did not 



Address of Mr. AdamsoH, of Georgia 29 

even appear to be chestnuts. If they were old, they were so 
well timed and so well applied that they appeared fresh and 
new. He was one of the most effective and telling speakers 
in the House, could always command attention, and always 
illumined the subject under discussion. 

His industry was indefatigable. He could do as much work 
as any man I ever saw, and it did not require as much exertion 
for him to do things as it would require in a duller and more 
plodding individual to accomplish the same results. There is 
such a thing as what people call a knack for turning out work. 
Something like the person described in Scripture, which declares 
that "Whatsoever he doeth shall prosper." His efforts seemed 
to be so well directed that with little difticulty he accomplished 
what other men toiled long and arduously to do. 

His mind was quick and comprehensive, his insight into im- 
portant matters penetrating, his grasp upon measures was far- 
reaching, and his judgment of men was unerring. Therefore 
almost unvarying success in his undertakings was easy. Little 
wonder, then, that as a result of his labors in Congress improve- 
ments material and lasting sprang up spontaneouslv, as if bv 
magic, all over the part of our country represented by him. 
The impress of his genius and industry is not only left upon 
matters and interests in our country but the results of his labors 
are manifest in Alaska and our island possessions. 

It was a sad dispensation of Providence that one so strong, 
so young, so brilliant, so well equipped for usefulness, and so 
full of promise to his family, his friends, and his country 
should be cut off in the flower of his young manhood without 
possibility of transferring to others the experience and wisdom 
which by toil and study he had acquired. But he has not lived 
in vain. His works verily do follow him. His example stands 
as a model and incentive to young America to emulate his vir- 



30 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushnuut 

tues, to strive to acquire and cultivate his good qualities, and^ 
live, as he did, for the good of his country and leave their 
impress upon the institutions of our land. 

The most lovely and interesting feature of his life is pre- 
sented bv his domestic relations. There are others better pre- 
pared from long acquaintance to speak of them than I am, but 
it was my good fortune to enjoy some acquaintance with his 
good wife and mother; and it was an inspiration to me to 
observe their affection for him and their pride in his success. 
After knowing them I do not wonder that in the light of their 
smiles, fostered by their encouragement, he should have become 
a good and a great man. Good women not only have pride, but 
they love and enjoy their pride. They are happy in their pride 
when aroused by worthy objects. They, the best and noblest 
creatures beneath the stars, have a right to expect and demand 
that the man they love and trust shall excel other men. The 
most miserable creature on earth is a woman chained by malign 
fortune to a vagabond, a known failure, a recognized wreck of 
manjiood. E converso, the happiest creature beneath the sun 
is the fond wife or mother swelling with pride in the conscious 
jov that her husband or son excels other men in those attri- 
butes which make men conspicuous among their fellows. 

Francis W. Cushman realized the truth of that Scripture 
which says: "Whoso findeth a good wife findeth a good 
thing." \'erily she was a joy unto her husband, and her pride 
and satisfaction in contemplating his nobility was the crowning 
glory of his life. What is to be said of his superb mother 
contributing to his greatness, and the reward which he con- 
ferred upon her in the noble life that he led? 

There was a pagan mother who was the daughter of the great 
General Germanicus. She thought she was proud in being the 
sister of an emperor. She afterwards imagined she was happy 



Address of Mr. Adaiiiso)!, of Georgia 31 

in beins ihc wife of another emperor, Inil she never feU the 
full flood tide of unbounded satisfaction until her pride was 
gratilied by seeing her son ascend the throne as an emperor. 

We read of a good woman spoken of by vSolon in his cele- 
brated dialogue with Cnxsus. No other means of transporta- 
tion being available her two sons yoked themselves to her 
chariot and drew her to the temple. They were glorified in life, 
deified in death, and she, proud and happy as the mother of 
such glorious sons, has been celebrated through the ages as the 
exalted object of their reverence and devotion. 

But there was another great woman whose example is more 
to the point. She was the daughter of a great general, who. 
after manv others had failed in leading the armies of Rome, 
had conquered the greatest military genius the world had pro- 
duced up to that time and destroyed his city and empire. She 
was the widow of a great man, renowned throughout the earth, 
twice consul and honored with two triumphs. She had care- 
fuhv nurtured 12 children. Her watchword to stimulate them 
to noble deeds was this: 

My children, must I be always known merely as llie daughter of Scipio 
Africanus? Why should I rather not lie known to an admiring world as 
the mother of the Gracchi? 

She realized her wish. She saw all of her 12 children bur- 
ied. She saw 2 of the 12, the celebrated two Gracchi, blaze 
into splendor and bless their country with their greatness and 
usefulness; and when all were dead and when mourning the 
loss of her children her friends commiserated het supposed 
unhappiness, she protested: 

Call me not unfortunate. I shall never cease to think myself a happy 
woman who have been the mother of the Gracchi. 

Weeping, devoted widow, bereaved, queenly mother, wipe 
awav vour tears. You have more of glory than of sorrow in 



32 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cnshman 

vour cup of life. You have lost, one a husband and the other 
a son, but you enjoyed for a long time the consolation and 
society of a husband and a son unexcelled in manly courage, 
manlv virtue, gentlemanly courtesy, and widespread usefulness 
among the sons of men. Like Saul he towered physically above 
the heads of his comrades, but mentally and morally he was 
equally conspicuous. Rejoice that Providence spared him to 
vou so long and blessed you and your country with his illus- 
trious life. 



Address of Mr. W'augcr, of Pennsylvania 33 



Address of Mr. Wanger, of Pennsylvania 

Mr. Speaker: The death of Francis W. Cushman not only 
stilled the voice that most of us and man)' thousands of our 
countrymen delighted to hear, but took from us the shining 
exemplar of genial companionship, untiring industry, and great 
ability in every phase of legislative endeavor. His physical 
frailty was such an effective setting to his intellectual brilliancy 
that his daily companions, charmed also by his bubbling good 
humor and witty remarks, were as wont to listen to his every 
utterance as was the stranger who for the first time beheld his 
thin, tall figure and realized that a great genius was expounding 
with forceful logic and apt illustration the leading question of 
the hour. 

From the time when, in indignant protest against what he 
felt was rank injustice, he hurled denunciations and defiance 
toward those he felt had denied him and his State the recogni- 
tion due and then robbed the thrusts of all venom by a por- 
trayal of the difficulties and dangers in his front and rear, and 
convulsed his audience by the witty statement: 

I tell you frankly that, between the two, I have become thinner than a 
canceled postage stamp — 

there was no question of his position in the foremost rank 
of congressional debaters. And notwithstanding his ill health 
and failing bodily strength, in the summer of last year his 
address on the tariff bill was as replete with cogent reasoning, 
withering sarcasm, and philosophic humor as any speech deliv- 
ered in that debate. 

It was in the fraternal association of committee membership 
that those of us who were not more closely affiliated with Mr. 

'^09*15 — H. Doc. 995, 61-2 3 



34 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 

CusHMAN learned to love him as a brother and were made to 
feel his kindness of heart and readiness to serve a just cause. 
The musical cadence of his voice, with its faint tinge of melan- 
choly, was no more fascinating than the words of his anecdotes 
or the nobility of his aspirations and deeds; and all fellow- 
committeemen were ever predisposed to heartily support the 
"little bill" — as he was wont to term each measure that he 
fathered — so that by his efforts was enacted a volume of legisla- 
tion that was alike a monument to his industry and efficiency 
as it was of inestimable benefit to the Pacific coast and the 
United States. 

The love and regard of husband and wife for each other were 
never more certainly evidenced or unconsciously displayed than 
in the informal intercourse of Mr. and Mrs. Cushman. It was 
unerringly certain that the brilliant genius and orator leaned 
upon the gentle woman and found joy and strength in her 
delicate appreciation of the honor and her rich return of the 
affection. In heart-to-heart talks with colleagues in recent 
years he avowed belief in the early closing of his congressional 
life and the finding of happiness and a field of more congenial 
labor in his Tacoma home and its library than were his in the 
legislative arena. 

So much has been said and written of his many admirable 
qualities, foremost among which were his purity of heart and 
labor for his country, that volumes might be filled with these 
just and merited tributes. There is one of several in an edi- 
torial in the Tacoma Daily Ledger as follows: 

We have a sure criterion wherewith to distinguish a true leader of men. 
He is disinterested; he pursues his line of effort without sinister intent. 
An ardent party man he may very well be — party is our political privilege 
in this country, when not abused— but there is something manifestly 
above party, and it is in this that his title to true greatness is seen and 



Address of Mr. Wanger, of Pennsylvania 35 

acknowledged by all. He can not be narrow. He must battle for his 
opinions, of course; he could not be a leader of men unless he did. But 
he fights, not as one bent on victory in any event; rather as one who 
would reap such conquests as truth in its own name and with its own ec|uip- 
ment may lawfully win. 

Now, there has just faded from our political sky a modest star wliicli by 
long years of unpretentious shining made good its claim to be enrolled 
among the constellation of immortals who have a place in memory's 
heavens fadeless forevermore. To our deceased Congressman, Francis W. 
CuSHMAN, this eulogy is due. He was great in his unconsciousness; 
great in his disinterested devotion to the great ideals which, early in life, 
he made regnant in his soul. To have the purest of motives; to pursue 
a line of policy and conduct for the good that was in it and for the good 
it would bring to his country at large, for this he wrought — not for glory; 
not for emolument; not to have it to say that he came up from poverty, 
and was able to wrap himself round with the majesty of office in the very 
high places of the political world. No expression hinting of self-glory ever 
escaped Mr. Cush.man's lips. 

He often told of his early struggles. * * * It was a story of won- 
derful intellectual and moral heroism, and betokened a youth of no ordinary 
courage and capacity that could come out of it with the palm of victory 
in his hands. * * * The sparkle of humor was over it all. 

Mr. CuSHMAN was a humorist, but not in the professional sense. With 
him it was that large faculty which the man of deep and serious insight 
uses in throwing the great problems of public policy into bas-relief for the 
leisurely contemplation of those who have no time or disposition for 
abstract thought. It is a popular misconception that humor is always 
light-minded in its working and is inconsistent w^ith any large faculty for 
looking profoundly into things— a mere superficial sparkle on the shallow 
mind. 

Nothing could be wider of the mark. * * * His wit was always 
tributary to the profoundly serious purpose he had in view. * * * He 
had gone to the heart of his subject, set it in vivid relief, and then sent the 
shafts of his wit in scintillating coruscation all round the weak points of 
the creed of the man who was on the other .side. 

What more beautiful illustration of the home building and 
aspirations of the poor than that of our dead friend in his last 



36 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 



formal speech in the House, in which, after referring to Laramie 
Peak, Wyoming, he said: 

Underneath the shadow of that majestic mountain my mother, my 
brother, and I built our little cabin home. It was only a cabin built of 
logs, but it sheltered hearts as pure and hopes as exalted as ever existed 
beneath the sweep of the almighty stars. 

The light of this brilliant star of Washington no longer blazes 
forth to illumine our pathway, but its radiance lingers with us 
and is an inspiration that will endure while memory survives. , 

We mourn his absence from our midst, but rejoice in and are 
thankful for the blessing of the association which we enjoyed 
and the guide to our feet which he gave and which endures. 






Address of Mr. Poindextcr, of \]'aslii)igtori 37 



Address of Mr. Poindexter, of WASfflNGTON 

Mr. Speaker: I have hesitated about imposing niyseU' on the 
patience of the House this afternoon, but upon reflection I con- 
ceived it was mv duty as a colleague of my deceased friend to 
take advantage of this last opportunity to say a word of appre- 
ciation of his character and memory. 

The thing that has impressed me most deeply in the short 
time that I have been a member of this body is the frequency 
and rapiditv with which the mysterious hand out of the potent 
and unknown space reaches into our midst and gives the signal 
of departure for our comrades and coworkers. We see them 
here engaged in active participation in the legislation of the 
countrv, and in the short space of time I have been here a 
number of them, one after another, have received the signal 
and have cast aside their weapons and utensils and means of 
occupation, and without a word, without a glance backward, 
have gone from our midst. They have taken the plunge into 
the Lethean waters, the surface has closed over them, and 
not a ripple is left upon the pool of oblivion to mark the spot 
of their departure. But affairs go on in their usual course. 
Not a step is missed in the procession, not a note is lost in the 
music of the world's progress, and that would be true even if 
they had been Csesars, even though they had been the world's 
greatest and most illustrious characters of the past, who have 
been so eloquently referred to by the gentleman from Georgia 
[Mr. Adamson], or the greatest characters of the present. 

When they disappear, we are impressed with the truth that 
we are but an infinitesimal part of the great world, even of the 
single nation in which we move and participate. 



38 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 

It was but yesterday that with all his lovable and brilliant 
qualities Frank Cushman was in our midst. This summons 
came to him and, although his body was left with us, with the 
same organs, vet there was gone from it that vibrant voice 
which so moved the souls of men. His eyes were still visible, 
but that look of genius with which we were all familiar had 
disappeared. A wonderful change had taken place, that mys- 
tery of mysteries, that thing which we call life, which had made 
him what he was to his people and to his colleagues, had gone. 
No man can tell or explain the change. The greatest philoso- 
phers from the foundation of the world have tried to understand 
life, just as has been said here to-day they have tried in vain 
through all civilization to peer into that inevitable mystery 
called death. The one is as much of a mystery as the other. 

My association with Frank Cushman was not as long nor as 
intimate, perhaps, as many others, but it was sufficiently long 
and sufficiently intimate for me to be impressed with a great 
manv of his lovable qualities. Among those, standing out 
above all others which characterized him, was his devotion 
and his loyalty to his friends. If a friend made a demand on 
him, there was no reservation on his part. He held nothing 
back. Whatever the servnce might have been, he was ready 
and quick to devote his entire self and all of his powers to the 
service of those to whom he owed an obligation ; and even those 
to whom he owed no obligation, the mere citizen of his country, 
the brother man of humanity, he was willing to ser\'e to the 
utmost. There was never a suspicion on the part of any man 
that ever knew him of the slightest swerving or hesitation from 
the true and loyal and sincere devotion and fealty to those with 
whom he was associated and to those who called him friend. 

So far as his intellect and character were concerned, Frank 
Cushman had that great essential quality of concentration, 
that facultv without which ver>- little that is great can be 



Address of Mr. Poindcxter, of Washinqton 39 

accomplished by any man. He had the faculty of collecting, 
of unifying, the various gifts with which he had been endowed 
and hurling them upon the point of attack, whatever it might 
have been. 

Frail in body, I have seen him when in action with a look 
approaching almost to fierceness in his brilliant eyes and with 
his entire intellect and strong passion which flowed from his 
great heart, unite upon the point in issue all his powers and 
strike herculean blows in the cause in which he was engaged. 

Now, it has been said that he has gone forever into oblivion, 
and that the world moves on as if he had never been. That is 
true in a certain sense, but just as no element in nature is 
ever lost, so it is true that no kind ser\ace that Cushman so 
often and so generously performed will ever be lost to his 
country and to his comrades. The influence which he exerted 
in his work in the public affairs of this country, although we 
stop but a moment now to eulogize his memorv, will never be 
lost, nor will the effect and the result of the sacrifices he made 
of his body and mind in the service of his country. These 
results have become a part of the condition of things, and, 
though unconsciously it may be, they will go on and on, having 
their effect in devious and unknown ways for long years after 
the particular circumstances surrounding them may be forgotten. 

We learned as children, and we believe as men, that there is 
a great and ever-present God, that He is in this Chamber, that 
He is outside in the glorious brilliancy of this spring day, that 
He rides upon the storm and exists in the blooming flowers, and 
Fr.^nk Cushm.^n, although we see him no longer, is but gone to 
the bosom of that God; and let us believe and trust that, as 
a part of that Eternal Spirit which lives and moves and has 
its being perpetually in our midst, the soul and spirit of Fr.wk 
CusHM.^N will be with us forever. 



40 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 



Address of Mr. Morrison, of Indiana 

Mr. vSpeaker: It is probable that the shortness of my service 
in this bodv should constrain me to pay but a silent tribute to 
the memory of Francis W. Cushman. Becoming modesty 
strongly indicates the propriety of leaving it to them who have 
known him through many years of friendship and common public 
service to voice our universal sentiment of respect and sorrow. 

Over against the force of manifest proprieties is a duty grow- 
ing out of benefits received and a keen sense of gratitude. 
Having but a very limited acquaintance with the Members of 
this House when I came to Washington, one of my older friend- 
ships led to an early meeting with Mr. Cushman. He was my 
first new acquaintance among the Representatives in Congress. 

His companionable disposition, his rich vein of genuine 
humor, and his vast fund of apt and striking anecdotes and 
illustrations were well calculated to make a new man forget 
to be lonesome and lead him into the enjoyment that lingers 
in the conscious presence of a congenial atmosphere. 

More than a decade ago he had himself been a new man in 
Congress, and he knew much of the needs of men first entering 
upon their duties here. He had learned that it is better to an- 
ticipate a brother's need than to stand ready to answer his ap- 
peal for aid. In that spirit he was most helpful in suggestions, 
advice, and information. Our homes being near each other, 
he took me with him on his errands through the departments, 
seeking to make easy and swift the mastery of the routine work 
which one must often learn amidst embarrassments and by slow 
and tedious processes. 

It was on these occasions, in our longer, friendlier talks, he 
disclosed the deeper and more serious side of his nature. It 



Address of My. Morrison, of Indiana ^i 

did not take long for us to discover that we had l-;nelt at a com- 
mon altar, partaken from a common cup, sealed a common 
faith, and enlisted in a common cause — the cause of Christian 
knighthood. This knowledge appeared to open the way to free 
and frank discussion of things that lay nearest the heart. 

He realized that the arduous duties of the public service 
were proving too severe a strain upon his physical powers to 
be much longer borne. He loved his work, but he was remain- 
ing in public life not so much for his own sake as for the sake 
of the friends who had been true to him when he most needed 
and desired their help. His had come to be a labor, not of 
ambition, but of gratitude. 

He planned to perform as fully as he could do in the then 
immediate future the duty he owed to his friends, his district, 
and, in a larger sense, to the Nation, looking forward to the 
time when he might justly ask to retire to private life and seek 
to regain his fast-failing health. Either he underestimated the 
intensity of the strain upon him or he overestimated the re- 
sisting power of his physical constitution. The end came be- 
fore his plans were fully executed. "His death was untimely 
and his brethren mourn." 

There is a tradition that fidelity to friends and duty has led 
to many sacrificial deaths among the membership of the Ameri- 
can Congress. On what foundation that tradition rests, I know 
not. This much 1 know — one such sacrifice has been made, one 
such tragedy has been enacted since the organization of the 
Sixty-first Congress. Francis W. Cushman loved the name of 
duty more than he feared the name of death. 

As one who profited largely by his goodness of heart, wise 
counsel, and kind deeds, I have craved permission to say a few 
words to-day, that I might not be in the attitude of one who 
accepts benefits lightly and forgets them quickly. 



42 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 

Our acquaintance was short, indeed, but it was long enough 
to enable me to know not only the quality of his public service, 
but also his firm faith in our common Master. 

A memorial held in honor of the dead leads men into neces- 
sary and vital touch with deep and essential religious truth. 
On such an occasion as this no strength of will can stand against 
the inevitable trend of the human mind and heart. Even 
the great agnostic when he stood beside the open grave of his 
departed brother was constrained to pronounce those beautiful 
words of budding faith and deathless hope : 

In the night of death hope sees a star and listening love hears the rustle of 
a wing. 

Assembled as we are to bear testimony to our respect and 
love for one whose faith and works were as an open book before 
his fellows, we can not but declare that while our brother has 
been removed forever from the ranks of knights militant, we 
doubt not that he has been admitted into the presence of the 
Eternal Father and into the society of just men made perfect, 
an innumerable company enrolled under a new banner — a 
banner no longer half black and half white, but all white, 
beautiful and resplendent in the pure, white light which radi- 
ates from the benign countenance of the Martyr of Golgotha, 
the Prince of Peace, the Great Captain of our Salvation. 



Address of Mr. Hamilion, of Michigan 43 



Address of Mr. Hamilton, of Michigan 

Mr. Speaker: Francis W. Cushman died July 6, 1909, at 
the age of 42. 

He was born in Iowa and went to school at Brighton High 
School and Pleasant Plain Academy, paying his way by work- 
ing as a water carrier on a railroad, and he took a post graduate 
course, working as a section hand. 

He moved to Wyoming when he was 16 years old and con- 
tinued his post graduate work in the school of human experi- 
ence, first as a cowboy on the Wyoming plains, then as a laborer 
in the lumber camps, then as a school-teacher and law student, 
then as a lawyer, and finally as a .Member of Congress from the 
State of Washington. 

Men divide time into years, days, and hours; that is to say, 
into spaces proportioned to the brevity of life. 

CusHMAx's life was approximately divided into five parts: 
About eight years of childhood; about eight years of school 
and the beginning of work; about eight years as cowboy, lum- 
berman, school-teacher, and law student; about eight years as 
a lawyer; and about eight years as a Representative in Congress. 

These eight-year periods represent a swift evolution, possible 
only here in America and possible only to a man pushed on by 
an unconquerable determination. 

Napoleon, musing by the cradle of his sleeping son, said: 

How long it takes to make a man' 1 have, however, seen fourteen of 
them cut off by a cannon shot. 

And yet in Cushman's case, the time was short; in fact, he 
always seemed to jne like a man who had a stint to finish. 

Out of the stillness and the vastness and the solitude of the 
plains and mountains, out of plodding self -discipline, out of 



44 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 

rugged surroundings, out of the simplicity of undecorated exist- 
ence, the personality we knew here as Cushman was developed. 

I do not underestimate the value of a university training; I do 
not agree with IngersoU's saying that a college- is a place where 
" Pebbles are polished and diamonds dimmed," although I have 
no doubt a college is a place where a good many pebbles are 
polished, but I am far from agreeing with certain college pro- 
fessors that a college training is indispensible. 

Cushman's career is an illustration of what a man with a 
purpose can do under American conditions. 

What made him what he was? No man can answer that. 
Thousands of men have had the same discipline, the same hard- 
ship, the same lack of opportunity, the same energy, and an 
equal amount of talent and have left no mark upon their time. 
• No man can rightly analyze the elements that make a man 
what he is. 

There is something in the subtle blending of traits and the 
balancing of talents that defies analysis, and it is not at all 
unlikely that early opportunity and early prosperity might have 
made Cushman quite another man and a much less interesting 
man. 

Not infrequentlv invalidism and poverty and untoward cir- 
cumstance have so narrowed and confined the forces of men and 
women that their very infirmities have been an asset for immor- 
tality. 

In "The Count of Monte Cristo" there is a conversation 
between Dantes and the Abbe Faria, in which Dantes, pro- 
foundly impressed with the abbe's mental grasp, expresses 
wonder at what he might have been if he had been free. 

And the abbe answers that he would probably have been 
"nothing," and proceeds to explain how the confines of his cell 
had concentrated his thoughts, which otherwise might have 
scattered and diffused themselves in common ways. 



Address of Mr. Hamilton, of Michigan 45 

History is full of talented unfortunates who have made the 
utmost of a little daylight and a little space of time, like blind 
Milton, Prescott, and Parkman; like Pope, Cowper, and Heine, 
John I^ichard Green, and Robert Louis Stevenson, whose lives 
were what Pope called his — a long disease. 

It not infrequently happens that the physically feeble member 
of a family, exempt from the rough usage of the struggle of 
life, and concentrated upon some single pursuit, is the brightest 
member of the family, and time and again poverty has demon- 
strated itself to be a stimulus to high endeavor. 

A great artist on being shown a picture by a person of rank 
said: 

You only want a little poverty, sir, to make you a great painter. 

There is something about inherited prosperity, about the easy 
conquest of material things, about the ability to reach out 
without effort and take what others have to strive for that 
softens the fiber, weakens the will, dissipates force, and lulls 
ambition, and I am inclined to think it takes as much moral 
courage for a man born on the fleece-lined side of things to 
strike out bravely and accomplish something for himself instead 
of degenerating into adipose content and blase indifference as 
it does to work upward from a lowly start in life, lured on bv 
the desire to possess what others have without effort. 

Thackeray somewhere says: 

Who ordered toil as a condition of life, ordcrerl weariness, ordered 
sickness, ordered poverty, failure, success — to this man a foremost 
place, to the other a nameless struggle with the crowd; to that a shameful 
fall, a paralyzed limb, a sudden accident; to each some work upon the 
ground he stands on until he is laid beneath it. 

And the work assigned to us is what gives character, disci- 
pline, and dignity to human existence. 

It is not so much that we can not fk) it better than some one 
else, it is that we do it the best we can. 



46 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 

If Cushman is a Ihdng intelligence — and this little space 
between two eternities which we call human life would be an 
inexplicable tragedy if he is not — he has solved the mystery 
of it all. 

Such careers as his and many of ours, short, without rest or 
holiday, stingy in their happiness, opulent in their irritations, 
trivial in their dignity; in short, human life itself, assuming an 
omnipotent intelligence which cares for its creatures, is expli- 
cable onlv upon the theory that here, amid the buffetings of cir- 
cumstance, compelled at every crossroads of human experience 
to choose our wav between right and wrong, we are making char- 
acter, developing a personality, and that somewhere on beyond 
there will be an accounting; and if we live on after the death 
of the body the accounting and the reward within our own 
inner consciousness will be in itself a reward or a punishment. 

We get pay for our work in the long run, but not every Sat- 
urday night. 

Cushman was born at the beginning of the reconstruction 
period and lived into the period of geographical and commercial 
expansion. He was a humorist, but he was a great deal more 
than a humorist — he was an intensely earnest man. 

To him events presented themselves and fixed themselves in 
pictures which he was a consummate artist in depicting. 

He set all New England laughing at herself when he advised 
her to let go of the tariff teat or quit kicking the cow. 

He impressed in a way that no statistics could impress upon 
the public mind the hard times from 1893 to 1897, when he 
described how, being reduced to a diet of clams, his stomach 
rose and fell with the tides. 

He had in that tall, gaunt personality a glint of genius and 
of imagination which is denied to many men. 

He found his way V)y politics upon this stage here where we 
linger for a time and then disappear. 



Address of Mr. Hamilton, of Michigan 47 

A successful politician, I think, must always have something 
of sentiment in him. He must share the fortunes and sym- 
pathize with the emotions of the people whom he represents, 
and the very intimacy of this relation makes it all the harder 
for him to stand out at times against the unreason of some 
popular movement. 

On the one hand, then, there is lime light, rhetoric, headlines, 
and glorification of the man who says he believes what the peo- 
ple want him to believe, and on the other there is denunciation, 
execration, vituperation, misrepresentation, and probable de- 
feat. And yet there is high authority that — 

the statesman who bends tu an emotional outVjurst of public opinion as 
richly deserves to be shot as a general who surrenders a city out of 
compassion for the inhabitants. 

When a man holds out, he always risks his own defeat and 
permanent eclipse. If he survives and wins in the end, he may 
be called a statesman, and if he does not win during his lifetime, 
but goes to defeat some time in after years, when he is dead 
and does not care for monuments the people may possibly gather 
together the stones wherewith they had stoned him in his 
lifetime and erect to him a monument over his unconscious 
remains. 

CusHMAN, I think, had in him the courage to stand out if 
necessary, although he was never brought to that supreme test. 

CuSHM.AN finished his work somewhat early. 

He has gone out of the turmoil of it all where men spend 
their lives struggling for gain or fame, only occasionally catch- 
ing the perfiune of a distant happiness which they never realize. 
This dream of happiness is as much a part of men as the belief 
in a hereafter and in God. 

CusnMAN has found out. 



48 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 



Address of Mr. Clark, or Missouri 

Mr. Speaker: Francis W. Cushman was one of the most 
brilliant men of the times in which he lived. This, I think, is 
no exaggeration. Brilliant seems to me to be the one word 
which most exactly describes his mind. He came from the new 
State of Washington to the city of Washington with the most 
flattering advance notices, heralded as "the Abraham Lincoln 
of the Pacific slope," which injured him more than it helped 
him, for when a man is so exploited he is expected to live up to 
the proclamation and to make good at once. Frequently no 
opportunity arises for some time enabling a man of extraordinary 
parts to show what is in him. vSo it was with Mr. Cushman; 
but when his opportunity did come, after some years of com- 
parative silence, he electrified both the House and the country 
by delivering one of the most brilliant, caustic, and audacious 
speeches ever heard within these historic walls — a speech which 
will never be forgotten by any man who heard it. From that 
day Cushman's place in the House was assured, for while it was 
such a bitter arraignment of the leaders as to make them squirm, 
it was so successful that after their anger wore away they con- 
cluded that he was a man to be reckoned with, and wisely they 
chose to promote him instead of trying to punish him. Promote 
him thev did, till he became a member of the great Committee on 
Ways and Means. It is literally true that that one speech, full 
of wit, humor, sarcasm, gall, and wormwood, laid the foundation 
of Cushman's fortunes here. Everybody declared that he had 
made good as to even the most flattering advance notices. The 
splendid reputation made that day he maintained and aug- 
mented to the end of his career. 



Address of Mr. Clark, of Missouri 49 

The newspapers exploited him as a humorist, and he is easily 
one of the dozen greatest humorists who have served in the 
House, and in that respect classes with Tom Corwin, Proctor 
Knott, Samuel vSulIivan Cox, and Private John Allen. Cushman 
was a rare hand at both choosing and telling an anecdote in a 
public speech, and none but an artist can succeed in that par- 
ticular line. 

But in addition to telling anecdotes which he, of course, picked 
up here and there, Cushman's own original remarks were of the 
most humorous character when he desired them so to be. Much 
has been said derogatory to all humorists, but they are a real 
blessing to mankind and serve as useful a purpose as the "drv 
as dusts." So, considered solely as a humorist, Cushman was 
in most excellent company. He was, however, much more than 
a humorist. He was a student and a philosopher — as much 
philosopher as humorist. He was intense in his beliefs and was 
willing to stand by them under any and all circumstances. For 
instance, he was one of the most thoroughgoing advocates of 
high protection, even the highest that ever lived. Nothing 
could convince him that he was wrong in that regard, and, if at 
last he yielded a little, it was done in order to retain the major 
portion of what he desired, and then with a protest such as few 
men could utter. He was a fine debater; he drove his argu- 
ments into men's minds with the force of a pile driver; he orna- 
mented and enforced his arguments -with happy effect and with 
wealth of illustration; he was quick to see good points in others; 
in private life he was gentle as a child; and he loved his friends 
and bound them to himself with hoops of steel. 

Perhaps no two men ever differed more widely in politics than 
he and I, but we were devoted friends. As such I honor him; 
as such I mourn his untimely death, which was a great loss, not 
only to this House, but to the entire country. 

S0945— H. Doc. 995, 6i-2 4 



50 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 



Address of Mr. Lowden, of Illinois 

Mr. Speaker: During the early days of the extra session of 
Congress last spring it so happened that Mr. Cushman and I 
frequently went home from the Capitol together. During this 
time he told me of an episode of his life which occurred when 
he was living in western Nebraska. He was then about 23 
years of age. His experience was so consistent with his char- 
acter, as we knew him, that, after consultation with his brother 
and friends, I have decided to relate it to-day. 

It appeared that Mr. Cushman and his brother, Edward E. 
Cushman, now federal judge for the District of Alaska, being 
very young men, in 1889 had gone to Bassett, Rock County, 
Nebr., and there undertaken the practice of law together. 
Rock County had just been set off from Brown County, and 
much bitterness had developed over a contest between Bassett 
and New^port as to which should be the county seat. This situ- 
ation was further complicated by the formation of a vigilance 
committee. One of the stories which was in circulation, and 
which was given considerable credence at that time, was that 
the Cushman brothers were really detectives employed by New- 
port to ferret out the frauds in the county-seat election in an 
action then pending in the courts. 

Young Cushman, shortly after his arrival at Bassett, became 
a candidate for the Republican nomination for county attorney. 
After a bitter contest in the convention, his rival was declared 
nominated. Those leaders who had managed the county-seat 
fight and who had succeeded in defeating Cushman became 
still more bitter toward the Cushman brothers. 

During this period the county had been flooded with coun- 
terfeit silver dollars. Young Cushman interested himself 



Address of Mr. Lowden, of Illinois 51 

sufficiently in the matter to write a letter to United States Sen- 
ator Manderson, informing him of the fact and suggesting that 
some action be taken by the Government to investigate the 
source from whence this counterfeit money came. As a result 
of this, secret -service agents were sent into the county and 
discovered that, among others, Cushman's opponent in the 
contest for the county attorneyship had been one of the coun- 
terfeiters. He was arrested, afterwards pleaded guilty, was 
convicted, and served his sentence. He, with others, started 
the story that the Cushman brothers were involved in this 
crime. 

At about this time the Cushman brothers decided that Bas- 
sett ofifered but little opportunity to members of the legal pro- 
fession, and they decided to close up their business there and 
move to Tacoma. It was agreed that Fr.\nk should go ahead 
and that his brother was to remain at Bassett for a short time 
in order to close up their business. Frank's going coincided, 
within a few^ days, with the arrest of the counterfeiters. While 
on his way to Omaha he was arrested by the federal authorities 
and was removed to Omaha, indicted for counterfeiting, placed 
in custody, and held for trial. Shortly thereafter he procured 
bail, insisting all the time upon a speedy trial. During this 
period a wayward boy, brother of a young woman he had known 
in Nebraska, who had been indicted, was arraigned before the 
court. There was no one to raise his voice in behalf of this boy. 
And CuSHMA.N, who himself was under indictment, undertook 
the defense, though he knew that this would probably preju- 
dice his own case. 

Cushman, after waiting more than three weeks for the indict- 
ment against himself to be reached for trial, learned that the 
Government, having exhausted its resources in an attempt to 
find sufficient evidence against him, had determined to nol- 



52 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 

pros the case. What he wanted was a trial, so that his inno- 
cence might be given the same publicity as his arrest. 

He insisted before Judge Dundy, who was United States 
judge for that district, that, if he could not have a public trial, 
he be given a few minutes to state his position to the court. 
This request was granted. 

And I will say that this episode was made an issue in one of 
Cushman's campaigns for Congress, but acted as a boomerang 
when the people learned of the facts, and to the honor of J. Ham- 
ilton Lewis, his opponent, as I am informed, he refused to take 
advantage of this story. 

I now quote from his remarks, as taken by the court stenog- 
rapher : 

By the courtesy of the court, for the enlightenment of the public and 
in defense of my own rights, I wish to make this brief statement. In the 
first place, I would say that I am that "lank, long-haired, hatchet-faced 
counterfeiter" of whom you have all heard so much. I should never ask 
for the opportunity to make this explanation if I had been given a public 
trial as I desired; but this I was denied by the prosecuting attorney. I 
am not now speaking to secure my release. That has already been accorded 
me. I do not linger here to make a defense which is necessary, but simply 
a statement of the facts regarding the outrage of which I have been the 
victim. 

First, I demand that my vindication in this matter be as public as my 
accusation. My arrest was heralded from the house tops and will travel 
to the uttermost confines of the State, where the whisper of my release 
will never gor The news of ray arrest has flown back to my friends that 
I have left, and suspicion has fallen on me like a dark and blackened cloud. 
The distorted rumor of this thing will precede me in my journey like a 
filthy odor wafted on the wings of the summer wind Here in this court 
room, with all possible publicity, was I charged with this crime, and here 
in the same place I demand my vindication. 

I have waited on the prosecution here now twenty-three days, and the 
case having now been dismissed, I only ask about three minutes to explain 
what 1 ex])ected to explain upon the stand. The facts are: I reside at 



Address of Mr. Lowden, of Illinois 53 

Bassett, where I have resided and been engaged in the practice of law for 
about two years, and at which place the inquisitive can learn upon inquiry 
that I have a reputation for truthfulness, honesty, decency, and sobriety. 
I left there upon the morning of the I2th of May for a business trip to the 
eastern portion of the State. My departure was made iniblicly and in 
daylight, and the object of my journey was the prosecution of legitimate 
business. I stopped at Fremont over night to see Hon. L. D. Richard and 
Ross L. Hammond, and other suspicious characters of that stamp, of my 
acquaintance. I was arrested the next morning as I was making public 
preparations for my departure. No explanation was given me of the 
cause of my arrest. At 4 o'clock that evening Deputy United States 
Marshal Lyons came up from Omaha and rearrested me on a warrant 
charging me with pretty much everything in the line of crime committed 
in the past or anticipated in tlie future, but principally upon the charge 
of manufacturing, selling, and handling counterfeit money. 

From 4 o'clock until 8 Lyons scattered as many misrepresentations 
and falsehoods about me as the short space of time and his limited intellect 
would permit. At 8 o'clock we came to Omaha with all the publicity 
possible. I have been here in custody and under bonds ever since. When 
I was arrested there was found on my person $30,66. This money was of 
all kinds and denominations. There were bills, there was gold, there was 
silver, there was nickel, and last and least, there was one little copper, and 
it was all suspiciously good. The marshal offered to return it. I asked 
him why he did not keep it for evidence. He said, "It's all good. It 
wouldn't be any evidence in the case." That is just the theory on which 
this entire case against me has been conducted. Had the money been 
bad, it would have been conclusive and damnable proof of my guilt. As 
it was good, that didn't prove anything. 

My baggage was also plundered by this same " King of Beasts," and 
found to contain a little of everything — except counterfeit money. There 
was my diploma from an eastern college to show that I had been a successful 
student. There were my books and papers which proved that I was a 
scholar. There was my certificate of admission to the supreme court of 
this State which, told that I was an attorney of good standing. There 
were also in ray grip about 500 letters — letters from my father, from my 
mother, from my brother, from my sweetheart, and from my business and 
legal correspondents, thoroughly establishing my whereabouts for the past 
five years. But these attracted no attention and were pawed to one side 



54 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 

in this search for "evidence." But stay! This super-astute detective 
found on my person some letters and other property of one Rev. H. B. 
Fleharty. The first thing that such a circumstance would suggest to the 
ordinary mind would be that that same preacher had considerable confi- 
dence in my integrity, or he would never have intrusted me with his 
property. But the acute intellect of this secret-service man couldn't be 
baffled in any such manner as this. He knew at once that I must be the 
preacher and " Reverend Fleharty," one of my numerous aliases. So 
much for that part of the case. 

Now, for twenty-three long, lonesome, and weary days I have haunted 
the corridors of this court room like a shadow, waiting for a trial. And 
now I am simply dismissed. \nA 1 rise to ask why I have not had a trial? 
There is a warrant here charging me with this filthy crime. There must 
have been some evidence produced before it was issued. I ask Mr. 
Slaughter, the marshal, where it is now? If it was sufficient to arrest me 
on, w-hy isn't it sufficient to try me on ? There must have been a mountain 
of testimony produced against me, or that indictment never would have 
been found. I ask the United States attorney, Mr. Baker, where it is now? 
Has it vanished like the vision of Don Roderick? Has it melted hke the 
mirage in the summer sun? Has the bellboy carried it off? Has it become 
entangled in the elevator shaft, or what has become of it' Mr. Baker says 
he isn't ready. Here is a man with all the power and all the wealth of the 
Federal Government at his command, and twenty-three of heaven's longest 
days to gather evidence against me, a wanderer in a strange land and a 
stranger in a strange court; but he isn't ready. No; he isn't ready, he' 
never has been, and he never will be. 

In former days a prosecuting attorney endeavored to hold 
himself as impartial as the court itself. It was not the number 
of convictions which made his fame, but rather the justice of 
them. To-day, all too frequently, the prosecuting attorney is 
not content with convicting men, but he must have the largest 
possible number of convictions to his credit. 

An indictment of an honest man, even though he be acquitted, 
is cruder punishment than the indictment and conviction of 
the perpetrator of a crime. For this reason the prosecutor, 
whether in state or federal courts, ought not to be a partisan. 



Address of Mr. Lowdcn, oj Illinois 55 

but should have an open mind until his conscience is persuaded 
by evidence that a crime has actually been committed. Every 
indictment and every prosecution which turn out to be unwar- 
ranted weaken immeasurably the authority of the courts. And 
any practice which diminishes the authority of the courts strikes 
at the very fundamental security of our liberties. I thank 
God that Fr.ancis W. Cushman, young and inexperienced as 
he was, had the courage to oppose this arbitrary exercise of 
power. He was but little more than a boy when this great 
crisis came to him, but he met it with the bravery which we, 
my fellow-Members, learned to know so well in his years of 
service in this Hall. In that case surely the boy was father to 
the man. 

I again quote: 

There is another point in this case to which I wish to call attention for 
my ow-n justification and for the benefit of another who can not to-day 
speak for himself — for whom in his sorrow and his misery no voice has 
been lifted save mine. I refer to the boy, James Cooper, and the few 
words I uttered in his defense, and the filthy insinuation thrown at me 
by the United States attorney when I uttered them. About two hours 
before young Cooper was arrainged before this court, and upon which 
occasion I spoke in his defense, I received a letter from his little sister. 
It was the fruit of a broken heart. It was soiled with a sister's tears. She 
said her poor brother was sick in mind and body, and asked me " for God's 
sake to help poor Jimmie." 

And then because my heart was not harder than the stones of your 
pavement, because the milk of human kmdness had not all dried up in 
my breast, and in spite of the advice of my friends and to the prejudice 
of my own cause, I raised my voice in defense of that erring, unfortunate, 
and misguided boy. I did it because I was not a miserable coward or 
feared anything he might say; but in my pity for him and sorrow for his 
angelic sister I would have shielded him with my own breast. Baker, 
characteristic of the small soul linked to his body, intimated that I did it 
because I feared his confession and wanted to screen my guilty head 
behind him. It was considered necessarv that he be convicted before he 



56 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 



could tell on me. That was too weeks ago. To-day he is self-convicted; 
confessed his own guilt. And I ask Baker where he is now? He doesn't 
answer. I'll tell you where he is. He is in that dismal jail, just two 
blocks from here, within sound of Baker's voice, and I now ask Baker 
why isn't he here to tell on me? He doesn't answer. I'll tell you why. 
Because they hounded him all over this town for three days; first, got 
him drunk; second, promised him liberty; and, last, threatened him with 
direst punishment, trying to drag something out of him derogatory to my 
character; and, finally, all they got out of that poor, sick, and unfortunate 
boy was " that if everybody had treated me as well as he has (meaning 
me), I would have been a better boy." That is what they got out of him, 
and that is why he isn't here. That statement was like good money that 
was found on ray person — "it wasn't any evidence in the case." 

The chief glory of the English-speaking bar in all ages has 
been its solemn and forceful protest in behalf of the friendless 
accused. I know of no instance anywhere in the juridicial his- 
tory of the English-speaking race more sublime than Cushm.^n 
exercised in this respect. He himself was under a charge of 
the most serious kind. 

He knew that to defend the boy, Cooper, in open court might 
be construed as an effort on his part to shield an accomplice, 
and thus prevent testimony against himself. But this conse- 
quence weighed as light as a feather against his own sense of 
duty. His great tenderness of heart did not permit him to 
remain silent. I call upon my fellow-Members to witness that 
this same greatness of heart was always manifested in this Hall. 
So long as he did the right thing in the present moment he was 
content to let God take care of the future years. He held our 
respect and admiration, but, better still, he had our love. 

I again quote from the court stenographer: 

Now, then, another thing I want to speak of is this: About sixty days 
ago my attention was called by a fellow-townsman to the fact that our 
city was flooded with spurious money. I immediately sat down and wrote 
of this fact to Senator Charles F Manderson — another "suspicious char- 
acter" I have had some connection with — and asked him to institute an 



Address oj Mi'. Loivdeii, of Illinois 57 

investigation. I submit to you that I am reaping a lovely reward for my 
fealtv to this Government ! That letter Manderson sent to Baker. He 
has had it all the time, and he has it now, and I dare him to deny it! And 
yet he has the audacity to attempt to prosecute me for this crime, the very 
existence of which I first pointed out! When it comes to regard for the 
welfare of this Government I will yield the iialm to no man, but before I 
would again risk my reputation by giving information to some of the 
officers of this court, to be distorted and turned against me, I would see 
this whole Federal Government sunk deeper in the shades of everlasting 
purgatory than a cast-iron cook stove would fall in nine hundred years. 
That is what I think about that 

To those certain newspaper men who have exhausted their genius in 
describing to the public my "hatchet-faced, hawk-eyed, and lantern- 
jawed" appearance, I would only say I doubt not that sickness and sorrow 
have v.asted my features, that grief and disappointment have traced their 
sad story on my face, but sin nor crime has made no wrinkle there. 

That I would commit any crime is preposterous, but I would rather die 
than sin against this Government. If there is one spot in my heart that 
is more tender than another, one impulse of my soul that thrills quicker 
than all others, it is my love for this Government This Government my 
ancestors helped to found; they helped to preserve it from destruction 
after it was founded; and its purity and perpetuity are a part of my 
life. * * * 

Another thing I want to refer to, which may not be "evidence in the 
case," hut which is, nevertheless, convincing proof of my innocence, is the 
fact that I remained here to face this charge after I was released and placed 
under bonds. To any sane man that is convincing and conclusive proof 
of ray innocence Through the extreme courtesy of his honor, my bonds 
were placed at the pitiful sum of $500, which matter was arranged by ray 
brother and gray-haired father without a murmur. Great God ! that I 
should ever have lived to see the day when those who are nearest and 
dearest to rae on earth should be forced into a court of justice to bail me 
out like a common criminal! Had I been guilty, I would have fled the 
instant the air of freedom fanned my cheek. Had I been guilty, my own 
kin, regardless of their bond, would have counseled me to flee, for even 
with that foul load of dishonor upon me, the remnant of their love would 
have clung to me wherever I fled in criminal exile Let no man accuse 
me of vaunting the virtues of my own family when I say that tender 



58 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 

solicitude and open-handed generosity toward one another are unfailing 
attributes of the whole race. By them filthy coin is never weighed in the 
same scale by which our joint happiness is measured. Never a mis- 
fortune weighed down one which the outpouring of the little all of the 
remainder would avert. Then, does any sane man say that, when only 
restrained by the pitiful and pusilanimous S500 I would have remained to 
meet this charge, of which, if proven guilty, the punishment is imprison- 
ment for half a lifetime? No man who knows how I love liberty and 
despise wealth will believe that. 

And now that I am dismissed, it is wondered why I linger here to make 
this explanation. Yes; after I have been causelessly arrested and detained 
for twenty-three days I am now dismissed with a blot upon my name and 
a stain upon my reputation. I can now go and rebuild what some one 
else has torn down. I can now commence to repair what has cost me the 
labor of my little lifetime to build up and what some one else has wantonly 
destroyed in a single hour. But I am dismissed! What an unreasonable 
fellow I must be to object after I have been dismissed ! I am not here, if 
you please, hunting for a dismissal, but demanding a vindication. A 
mere dismissal might afford a sufficient hole for a guilty whelp to crawl 
out of, but it is no doorway for an innocent man to walk through. That 
dismissal is, of course, payment in full for all that I have suffered in mind 
and body, and I presume it is a full legal tender for the tears of my mother 
when she read the account of this filthy thing, and I was imprisoned and 
not allowed to send her a little message and tell her it was all a false and 
damnable lie! 

******* 

I am through, your honor, and I extend to the court my sincere thanks 
for the extreme courtesy so graciously tendered me, and also to the numer- 
ous gentlemen for their kind attention. ^ 

These excerpts from Cushman's address to the court, deUv- 
ered while yet his manhood was in its earl}- dawn, reveal the 
dominating qualities of his character, those qualities which 
made him so forceful a personality here. 

You recognize courage of the highest order. He was big 
enough to extend his hand to one of the weakest of God's crea- 
tures at a time when by doing so he imperiled his own future 



Address of Mr. Lowdcn, of Illinois 59 

safety. He showed a genius for friendship when his eye could 
not pierce the clouds that enveloped him roundabout. When 
his sense of duty and his self-interest clashed, self-interest sank 
from sight and unhesitatingly he trod the path of duty, heed- 
less where it might lead. Though scarcely more than a boy, 
he had already learned the lesson that he who meets the crises 
of his life face to face may go forth into the future with a divine 
indifference to the petty judgments of men and time. He 
knew that the all-important thing was to do the brave and 
manly thing now, careless of future consequences. He felt 
that though the circumstances of earth might crush an inno- 
cent man, they could not scar his soul. Slander may bow the 
head and even break the heart, but it can not long injure the 
reputation of the living or the dead. There is a power some- 
where in the universe which preserves all the noble, tender, and 
heroic impulses of good men and which mercifully prepares 
oblivion for the slanders and passions and meannesses of other 
men. 

CuSHMAX is dead. There was always a rivalry between the 
greatness of his mind and the greatness of his heart. He was 
equally brilliant and noble and manly. His character and his 
intellect were in perfect equilibrium. Like Lincoln, his wonder- 
ful humor was employed not as an end in itself, but only to 
illuminate the controlling purposes of his life. It never became 
his master, but was alwa\s the servant of his serious thought. 
It was not like heat lightning, brilliant but purposeless. It rent 
the clouds asunder, and the rains fell upon the dusty highway 
of human life. 

CusH.M.\N is dead, but his open, manly, and affectionate 
Utterances and deeds will live forever in the memory of this 
great body, which in his lifetime he honored and loved. 



6o Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 



Address of Mr. Knowland, df Californu 

Mr. Speaker: With the innumerable matters constantly 
engaging our attention, and in a body as large as the House of 
Representatives, it is diflScult and practically impossible for 
Members to become intimately acquainted with but a com- 
paratively small percentage of their colleagues. Probably the 
best opportunities for intimate acquaintance, resulting fre- 
quently in the forming of lasting friendships, present them- 
selves through the association of Members day after day on the 
great working committees of the House. 

I consider myself fortunate that such an opportunity came 
to me through service on the Committee on Interstate and 
Foreign Commerce, where I sat for a number of years with the 
distinguished Member from the State of Washington, the late 
Fr.\ncis W. Cushm.'^n. The fact that vye were the only two 
Pacific coast and far western representatives on that committee 
of itself tended to bring us into closer relationship. 

Those members of this committee who officially visited the 
Panama Canal during the Christmas holidays a little over a 
year ago recall with no small degree of satisfaction that Repre- 
sentative and Mrs. Cushman were of the party, and the cheer- 
fulness and geniality of the gentleman from the State of Wash- 
ington added not a little to the pleasure and enjoyment of all. 
I call to mind very distinctly many occasions during that trip, 
particularly after we had reached the Tropics, when the even- 
ing hours were the most pleasant, of coming upon Representa- 
tive Cushman and wife seated together in some sheltered nook 
on deck, content and happy in the enjoyment of each other's 
company, w'hich suggested to me the thought that no newiy 
wedded couple on their honeymoon could have evidenced 



Address of Mr. Kiundarid, of California 6i 

greater devotion. How little either then imagined that in less 
than seven months the hand of death would be laid heavily upon 
one, causing a separation that only such an affliction could have 
brought about. I have no doubt but that the sorrowing widow 
has looked back a thousand times and thanked God for the 
privilege of those sweet hours of association with the man shp 
loved — opportunities which in this busy world come only too 
infrequently to man and wife in the whirl of business, social, 
and public life, a fact to which we invariably awaken when too 
late. 

It is not my purpose to review in detail the career of Con- 
gressman CusHMAN, leaving this to the Representatives from 
his own State. I do, however, wish to touch briefly upon cer- 
tain characteristics of the man which appealed particularly to 
me. Congressman Cushman abhorred sensationalism. He 
always evidenced the greatest contempt for the individual who 
would put aside personal convictions in ordtr to gain favor 
with the mob that appeared to be, for the time being, in public 
favor. He has frequently expressed to me an abiding faith in 
the common sense of the great American people, contending 
that, although perhaps temporarily swayed by the clamor of 
demagogues, they could be depended upon eventually, under the 
calm judgment of second thought, to return to that which was 
sane. Others might be carried off their feet bv those cvcles of 
hysteria which sweep across the continent, but Cushman never 
came under the spell. He was the sworn enemv of everv sham, 
and it was a delight to listen to him unburden himself when he 
found some one in sympathy with his state of mind. 

He was a poor boy and had never known leisure. He died 
possessed of small means, but he left a record of a life full of 
successes and an honorable name, which are more valuable than 
vast estates. Few men are endowed with a keener wit, the 



62 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 

display of which often resulted in confusion to an antagonist in 
debate. Too frequently men thus gifted are unmerciful in 
wounding the feelings of others, the desire to score a point or 
raise a laugh being indulged in without thought of how the 
thrust may wound a sensitive antagonist, frequently cutting to 
the very quick. His humor was never used to wound, but was 
strikingly effective in illustrating a point. Cushman was an 
indefatigable worker, never overlooking the smallest request 
from the most obscure constituent. He was an active and 
efficient member of the committees to which he was assigned. 

The country feels his loss; his State, which honored him for 
six successive terms, is deprived of a most experienced and able 
representative. The Pacific coast delegation, of which he was 
one of the oldest in point of service, reaUzes that the interests 
of the coast have lost a most effective champion. I doubt not 
that had he lived greater honors would have been accorded 
him; but had he attained position with added powers, had he 
occupied stations carrying honors beyond those previously held, 
Francis W. Cushman would never have forgotten his origin, 
and at all times and upon every occasion would have shown 
sympathy for those who sprang as he had from the lowliest 
station. No added honor could have increased the love borne 
him by his colleagues, and his delightful personality will always 
be one of the most pleasant memories cherished by every Mem- 
ber of this House who was privileged to sit with him. 



Address of Mr. Stevens, of Minnesota 63 



Address of Mr. Stevens, of Minnesota 

Mr. Speaker. It is a melancholy privilege to one who knew 
pR.'iNCis W. CusHMAN well at the height of his activities and 
usefulness now to bear a last and loving tribute to his memory. 

Our intiniacv and friendship has filled a very important place 
in mv life in this House, and the usual expressions of courtesy 
and regret on occasions of this sort have no part in any remarks 
by me. For six years we sat side by side in the almost daily 
sessions of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, 
and for two terms our seats adjoined upon the floor of the 
House. We had engaged in the same contests and had many 
similar views on public questions, and had traveled together 
many thousands of miles, on land and seas, in the performance 
of public duties. 

Thus opportunity came to me to know him as he actually 
was. It was given to me to realize the real man and to appre- 
ciate the worth and beauty of his character and life. His was 
a rare spirit, such as is given to few on this earth, to illumine 
the pathway as he went, by the brilliancy of his wit, by the 
soundness of his wisdom, by the breadth of his experience, and 
the strength and the courage of his heroic nature. The pomp 
and power and pride of official position never changed his 
simple faith or effaced the lovable and the steadfast in his 
manly character. No man can go far astray whose love of 
family and kindred and friends was so great and a guiding 
element in his daily personal and public life, as such was with 
our lamented associate. There always recurred to his memory 
the visions of a youth of privation and sacrifice and struggle, 
and yet brimming with the recollections of material helpfulness 
and family affection and youthful ties, which directed and 



64 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 

sweetened and inspired the constant upward march of his own 
career and fortunes. 

He was fortunate in his domestic happiness and in his per- 
sonal likings for men, and these with his ever-present good 
sense saved him from being spoiled as the world began gradually 
to appreciate him as one of the most interesting and unique 
characters of our later political history. The most distinguished 
festal occasions in this country eagerly sought his presence 
and the assistance of his brilHant and almost inspired tongue, 
and the gems of his addresses yet linger in the memories of 
those who were fortunate enough to hear them as some of the 
real events of a lifetime. 

None could surpass him in the breadth of genuine humanity, 
which seemed to permeate all of his works, his character, and 
his philosophy of life. This was the basis of his power to 
move men. His quaint appeals to the sense and sensibilities of 
his auditors gave him always a ready hearing, won for his argu- 
ments a most cordial reception, and made for him a deserved 
reputation as one of the most effective platform orators of our 
time. He could really show to us ourselves as others honestly 
see us. He appreciated and illustrated as few have done the 
real western characteristics of the composite American beyond 
the Mississippi River. He reveled in the depths of resourceful- 
ness and helpfulness and optimism of the men who made the 
West, and became a striking personal e.xample of their idealism, 
their progressiveness, and patriotism. From his own loyal na- 
ture and experience he portrayed the virtues and advancement 
which his section and his people had made within a score of 
years, and that this was but the index of what the future would 
surely bring forth. As the mood came he would soar with the 
wings of the wind above the material considerations which 
moved men here and seek the serencr atmosphere where his 



Address of Mr. Stevens, of Minnesota 65 

spirit loved to dwell, and then a moment after would bring us 
back to earth in the tenderest, kindest, and brightest way, with 
smiles chasing tears and tears melting into laughter, all of us 
the better for the glimpse, with him, into the higher and brighter 
spheres. 

These God-given gifts arc too often abused by their pos- 
sessors. His was the exception. He believed his rare faculty 
was granted to him for the uplifting of his fellow-men, to lead 
them along the sound and safe paths in personal and public 
affairs, and to impress them with the ever true and yet ever 
old truths as to the relations of man with their fellow-men 
and the obligations of us all to our country and its most 
beneficial institutions. Yet none knew better than he, that 
mingled with the loftiest strains of sacrifice and patriotism 
will be so often found the meaner streaks of selfishness and nar- 
rowness, and that it is the sum of all these qualities which must 
make up our communities and our Nation, and that practical 
men of affairs must take account of man as he actually is and 
labor to make conditions just a little bit better. 

He always gloried in what his people and section had accom- 
plished in the span of a short life, and to him was given the 
clear vision to behold within this time the gigantic forces which 
had swept the American desert from the map of the interior of 
our continent, which has created great and rich cities, fertile 
farms, and happy homes amid the wilderness, almost by the 
wand of the genii, and had peopled them with the most restless, 
progressive, ambitious, and resourceful composite of the races 
of the world. And no one has surpassed him in depicting the 
wonders of this history and the humanity and hopefulness 
which radiates through everv part of it. ' 

We miss him in our public work. We miss his clear-eyed 

f 

courage, his sound wisdom, and radiant hopefulness. We miss 

5094s— H. Doc. 995, 61-2 5 



66 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 

his profound faith in the triumph of the forces of progress and 
brotherly kindness, and that with the splendid material advance- 
ment would equally go the highest moral and spiritual accom- 
paniment. We miss his keen and accurate analysis of men 
and conditions, when, with a phrase which would electrify his 
listeners, he would lay bare the source of the difficulties which 
would almost suggest their own remedies. No one could do 
that unless he be gifted with an honest soul, a clean mind, and 
a serene courage and faith which believes in a triumphant 
righteousness. 

But words can not add to his fame among his fellow-men 
or to the love which those who knew him well bore for him. 
His memory for us will be a cherished treasure, and the example 
of his qualities and his achievements will be a grateful posses- 
sion for those of us who were his friends, and a blessed legacy 
to those who had the right to love him best. And no one can 
rightfullv tell how far that bountiful affection of his for his 
loved ones and their sympathy and love for him uplifted and 
ennobled and sanctified that life to which they all had con- 
tributed and for which they have such a just and mournful 
pride. 

When his final summons came few had greater right to 
exclaim : 

I have fought a good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the 
faith. 

He never failed to march breast forward. 

Never doubted clouds would break. 

Never thought, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph; 

Believed we fall to rise; are beaten to fight harder; sleep to wake. 



Address oj Mr. Wickcrsham, of Alaska 67 



Address of Mr. Wickersham, of Alaska 

Mr. Speaker: The people of Alaska wish me to pay their 
tribute of love to the nieniory of Frank Cushman. He was my 
friend for twenty years, and every sentiment which I express 
for the people of my Territory comes also from the abundance 
of my own affection for him. 

The hardy men of the far Northwest wish me to acknowledge 
their indebtedness to him as a national legislator. It rarely 
falls to the lot of a Member of this House to represent two great 
constituencies at the same time, but for some years Frank 
CusHMAN represented his own State of Washington on this floor 
and, out of his innate courtesy and his abiding friendship for 
the miners of Alaska, gave equal attention to their interests. 

Benjamin Harrison, of Indiana, and Frank Cushm.^n, of 
Washington, gave Alaska her organic laws. They laid the 
foundation stones upon which the loyal men of the North are 
to build another sovereign State in the' American Union. 

CusHMAN was a man of the Great Plains — a cowboy in his 
youth and a mountain man. His independent character devel- 
oped along the line of freedom in government, and, when the 
opportunity came to draft an organic law for Alaska, he followed 
the principles of his Revolutionary ancestors and drew a bill 
which gave the pioneers of that Territory the right to begin the 
formation of an American State. 

The people of Alaska knew and appreciated Frank Cushman 
and the confidence which they had in him was returned in kind. 
He was a frontiersman, as they are. He was a plainsman, a 
mountain man, and a miner, as they are. His faults, like theirs, 
were those of a cleanly minded man in love with the plains, the 
rivers, and the mountains. He forgave faults in the men of 



68 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 

Alaska and hid them smilingly; he appreciated their homely 
virtues and lovingly exaggerated them. They will always 
remember him as a happy westerner who did great things with 
a smile and a story which amused and instructed without 
wounding. 

Death comes to all; it is a common heritage; iDUt a brilliant 
mind, a happy heart, a successful public career, and the friend- 
ship of a great frontier country come only to a favored few. 

Cushm.^n's brilliance of mind, his happy disposition, his 
manifold legislative activities for the people of Alaska, and the 
bonds of friendship which grew between himself and the "sour- 
doughs" of the North have impressed them much more than 
the single fact of death. They will remember all that was 
bright and happy and good in his character. They will remem- 
ber that he was a brilliant orator, a legislator of national repu- 
tation, a loving husband and son; but more than all will they 
remember that he was their friend. 

Hail, from the land of the northern light. 

Whose arctic halo illumes the night. 

Hail, from the Land of the Midnight Sun, 

Where the mighty Yukon's waters run. 

Hail, from the land of riches untold, 

Where "niggerheads" carpet a floor of gold. 

Hail, from Juneau, Valdez, Fairbanks, Nome; 

From the humble miner in his mountain home; 

Hail, from Alaskans, who loved him well. 

Who pay their tribute and bid farewell. 



Address of Mr. Olcoti, of New York 69 



Address of Mr. Olcott, of New York 

Mr. Speaker. The gentlemen that have preceded nie had the 
high privilege of knowing for a greater number of years, and more 
intimately than I, our late colleague Francis W. Cushman, but 
I know that none of them can appreciate more than I do his 
charming personality and his great ability, and I share with 
them a sense of great personal loss. 

It was given to me to be present at the last time he delivered 
a public address. It was on the occasion of a dinner given by 
the Canadian Club, of New York, in the city of New York, on 
May 14, 1909. Notwithstanding the pressure of work, he had 
consented to go to New York and talk on the Panama Canal 
from a layman's standpoint. Mr. Cushman was received with 
the acclaim that would be naturally accorded to one of his posi- 
tion on such an occasion, but at the close of his speech he re- 
ceived an ovation that was a tribute to his ability and to his 
personality there so admirably exhibited that is seldom equaled, 
and at the end of the dinner the distinguished guests pressed 
forward to have the pleasure of personally greeting the man 
who had so charmed them. I think that nothing I can say can 
express so well the real character of the man of whom we speak 
than to print as part of my remarks what he said then in this, 
his last public utterance: 

The To.\.STMASTER. The Hon. Mr. Cushman, gentlemen, has the repu- 
tation of being one of the most eloquent and witty speakers in the House 
of Representatives. I am sure that when you have heard him you will 
so conclude. He is here to speak on the subject of "The Panama Canal," 
and I have very great pleasure in introducing him. [Applause.] 

Hon. Francis W. Cushman. Ladies and gentlemen, it is with more than 
usual trepidation that I arise on this occasion. So far as I recall this is to 
be the second encounter of my life with Canadian Club. [Laughter.] In 



yo Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 

that former encounter I was badly worsted in the sixth or seventli round — 
I have forgotten exactly which. [Laughter.] My memory has never been 
exceedingly accurate regarding the closing operations of that conflict. 
[Laughter.] 

There is an American superstition abroad in the land to the effect that 
an American politician can always make a speech, under any and all 
circumstances. I will add somewhat to the knowledge of mankind to-night 
if I do nothing else than destroy that time-honored superstition. [Laugh- 
ter.] 

The chairman of this meeting has given me a very kindly introduction 
to you, leaving, perhaps, the idea that I was going to make you an excellent 
speech. I am reminded of a little incident that occurred to me in one of 
our Southern States. I climbed off the train very hurriedly at one of the 
stations in Alabama. I wanted some change very quickly, and I rushed 
up to a rather ragged-looking colored brother and said to him, "Could 
you give me change for S20?" He looked at me, and he said: "No, I 
can't, boss: but I thanks you for de compliment jes de same." [Laughter 
and applause] 

Now, gentlemen, although I may prove decidedly disappointing to you 
to-night, like that colored brother, I thank you for the compliment just 
the same. [Laughter.] 

I am laboring under another embarrassment. \\'henever I come over 
here to New York City — the great empire city of this nation — coming as I 
do from the far West — why, I always get so nervous at these banquets 
that I can hardly get my knife into my mouth. [Laughter.] 

Seeing this bevy of beauty we have with us to-night, Mr. Toastmaster, 
reminds me of a little incident that happened to one of the members of 
our legislature. Yon Y'enson by name — American citizen, I think, of French 
extraction. [Laughter.] Yenson had been raised away out on the frontier, 
and he was not used to any of the modern conveniences of civilization. 
He never had talked over a telephone in his life. Some of the boys got 
to explaining to him what a wonderful thing the telephone was, and that 
he could talk to his wife Lena, if he desired. 250 miles away. He declined 
to believe that story. In order to demonstrate it to him they told central 
to get his wife on the wire, then they called him up and instructed him to 
take hold of the telephone, and go up and put his mouth close to the tele- 
phone and say, "Hello, Lena! is that you?" There was a great storm 
raging somewhere along the line, and just as he placed his mouth to the 



Address of Mr. Olcott, of New York 71 

telephone lightning struck the wire and knocked him about 15 feet. When 
he got up, he said: "That's Lena, all right." (Laughter.) 

I am honored and pleased to be here to-night on this great occasion, 
to utter my words of felicitation. There lies to the north of us a great 
country, inhabited by people who are separated from us only by an imagi- 
nary line. [Applause.] The great Aryan branch of civilization has been 
declared the greatest of all the branches of the human tree; and the English- 
speaking offshoot has formed the liighest type of perfect manhood whose 
feet have pressed the earth since the day that Noah left the Ark. [Ap- 
plause.] Let us not, therefore, quarrel with our neighbors and our kin. 
Let us vie with them in friendly emulation; let us vie with them on that 
high and honorable field of open and fair endeavor, where every forward 
step taken, alike by your people or mine, shall redound to our mutual 
benefit and our common glory. [Applause.] 

I see sitting upon my left hand here an honored member of the Canadian 
parliament, occupying in that great country a somewhat similar position 
to the one 1 occupv in our own country. I do not know how it is with my 
countrymen in general — some men have strange ambitions. I never had 
the political ambition that made me desire to be a member of the state 
legislature, or desire to be a governor; but from my earliest boyhood I 
had a consuming desire to be a Member of the great American House of 
Representatives. Down the vista of all my dreams I saw arising the 
great white Dome of the Capitol of the only true republic on earth. [Ap- 
plause.] And I followed that vision from youth to manhood, through 
sickness and sorrow and misfortune, with an ambition that was as honorable 
as it seemed hopeless. And in the years of my young manhood, after 
pursuing it like a constable after an absconding debtor, I overtook it. 
[Laughter and applause.] When I reached the Capitol of my country, I 
o-uess my lines of elevation and specifications were not such as to mark me 
down to those who gazed upon me as a Congressman, but I felt all right ! 
[Applause and laughter.] My hair was a trifle long and my coat not of the 
latest cut, but as I reached the Capitol of my country and started down 
that long corridor toward the door of the House of Representatives, loom- 
ing in front of me, I felt, sir, that God's elect were about to come into 
their own! JLaughter] To be entirely frank with you, I could feel the 
earth tremble, conscious of the importance of my tread. [Laughter.] 

But, unfortunately, when I reached the doorway in the Capitol, they 
had a cou])le of guards stationed there to keep out the profane. One 



72 Memorial Addresses: Representative Ciishman 

of those fellows grabbed hold of me and said, "Stand back, there I Stand 
back! Keep this way clear. You can't go in there; nobody but Members 
of Congress are allowed in there!" I said, "If you please, sir, I am a 
Member." He said, "You are a what?" [Laughter.] "Why," I said, 
"I am a Member of Congress; my name is Mr Cushm.w, from the State 
of 'Washington." He took out a long, printed list, ran down that list, 
and said, "Is your name Francis W Cushm.'VN?" I said, "That is me." 
[Laughter.] The fellow bowed clear below his garters, and he said, "Pass 
right in, Mr. Cushm.an." .^s I went through the swinging doors he turned 
to the other guard and said " Good God, Bill ! Did you see that ? " [Laugh- 
ter.] And then he said, "I will never have the nerve to stop anything 
else that shows up!" [Laughter.] 

I realize that the toast, "The Panama Canal," is an unusually dry sub- 
ject. [Laughter.] I would not willingly have chosen it myself, had not 
my beloved friend and colleague, Brother Olcott, insisted that I should 
come over here. He said, "Cushman, you have got to go; I will feel 
humiliated if you don't go." I knew I would feel humiliated if I did. 
[Laughter.] But I have for him that fondness and affection, and like- 
wise, having observed him for many years in the House of Representa- 
tives, I know he speaks as one having authority. So when he requested 
me to come I considered it as a command. 

I take it, gentlemen, that there is no true American who is not deeply 
interested in that great project, the completion of the Panama Canal; a 
project in which is wrapped up our pride, our prosperity, and which makes 
for our national prestige. I shall not weary you to-night with any tech- 
nical nor tiresome details. 

I have visited the Isthmus of Panama twice in my life, once four years 
ago and once last January. And before I went to Panama I had a con- 
suming desire to understand, if I could, the manner in which that canal 
was being dug. I had talked with engineers, who talked to me learnedly 
about the prism of the canal, the Gatun dam, the double flight of locks, 
and the great Culebra cut, and numerous other high-sounding terms that 
left my mind an entire blank. [Laughter. [ I felt, perhaps, that there 
were other men in the United States who labored under similar difficulties 
with myself. The varying degrees of misconception among the American 
people regarding that canal range all the way from those who think it is 
to be a shallow ditch, dredged across the narroWi flat neck of land, to 
other people who think that the mountains are so high at that point that 



Address of Mr. Olcoit, of New York 73 

a great tunnel is to be driven through the mountains, whose top shHll he 
high enough to admit the smokestacks of battle ships. 

Now, then, if I can do nothing else to-night, I may perhaps be able to 
draw you in simple language a layman's picture of the Panama Canal— a 
white man's picture, so to speak — that an ordinary, intelligent American 
citizen may understand, unencumbered with high-sounding scientific and 
technical terms. If I do tliat in a few moments, I shall feel amply repaid 
for the effort. 

First, let me say, that a trip to the Isthmus of Panama is indeed delight- 
ful. No man who lives in a northern clime ever sailed away in midwinter 
toward the Tropics without being overtaken by a feeling of delight. Every 
additional hour the breezes feel more balmy, and as he sees the shade of 
palm-fringed islands in the distance he begins to realize the dreams of his 
boyhood, when we all of us aspired to be not the President of the United 
States, but the boss pirate of the Spanish Main. [Laughter.] 

On the way to Panama we pass one exceedingly historic bit of land — 
the island of San Salvador, being that island upon which Christopher 
Columbus first set foot on the soil of the Western Hemisphere. It is one 
of the group of Bahama Islands. Unfortunately the name has been 
changed from San Salvador to Watling Island — when or how this name was 
changed I have been unable to ascertain I was told it was presumed 
to have taken its name from one John Watling, a sin-hardened old pirate, 
who was shot for sacking the city, about 1681. 

But as we pass on south, beyond the island of San Salvador and toward 
the Isthmus, we begin to see the beautiful, gorgeous constellations stud- 
ding the skies, chief among them the beautiful constellation of the Southern 
Cross. I take it that few of you men here in New York are familiar with 
the Southern Cross; you are more familiar with the double cross; [Laugh- 
ter.] That, gentlemen, I am informed, is a constellation that can be seen 
to great advantage from almost any elevation on Wall street; [Laughter.] 

Many of us for years have thought the Isthmus of Panama was a semi- 
barbaric region, with no history worth remembering, no story worth 
recalling, until the American Nation began to dig the canal there. Per- 
mit me to assure you that that is a mistake. There are few bits of terri- 
tory in the Western Hemisphere that have a history more romantic and 
engaging than that little ribbon-like neck of land which joins North and 
South .America. 



74 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 

Christopher Columbus, on his fourth voyage, sailed around the southern 
shores of the Caribbean Sea and passed the Isthmus of Panama. Balboa 
crossed the Isthmus of Panama at almost the exact point where the canal 
is now projected; and from the summit of one of the palm-fringed hills in 
the center of the Isthmus the all-conquering eye of the white man first 
beheld the blue expanse of the mighty Pacific. 

The city of Panama, on the Pacific coast side, years and years ago — 
centuries ago — was one of the richest cities of the globe. It was a veri- 
table storehouse for the pearl fisheries of the Pacific and a clearing-house 
for the gold and silver treasures of Peru. In sixteen hundred and odd 
Morgan, the great buccaneer — not Pierpont, but Henry [laughter]— 
crossed that Isthmus at the head of 2,000 pirates and sacked that city, 
which then had nearly a hundred thousand people and untold treasures. 
There arises to-day from the midst of the remains of the old city of Panama 
the tower of the Church of St. Catherine, and you get a fine idea of the 
age and of that civilization when I tell you that it was in that church that 
Pizarro stopped to say mass on his way to conquer Peru. 

It has a history, romantic and engaging, and I might continue for hours 
to digress upon that, but I must hurry on, mindful of the fact that there 
are eminent men to follow me. 

In the first place, I might say that the points of the compass are sadly 
confused upon the Isthmus of Panama. If you will bear in mind, as you 
travel from North America south, down through Mexico and Central 
America and into the Isthmus of Panama, while we are presumably trav- 
eling south, the line of land runs first south, then southeast, then east, 
and then turns back northeast. So that the Isthmus of Panama, at the 
point where the canal crosses, runs northeast, and the line of the canal 
cuts across in the direction of southeast; so, when you stand at the Pacific 
coast terminus of the canal you are farther east than you were when you 
left the Atlantic end. [Laughter.] 

While in the city of Panama I enjoyed the uniqe pleasure of seeing the 
sun rise directly out of the Pacific Ocean. I was stopping at the Hotel 
Tivoli, which was an entirely temperance joint [laughter], and I know I 
was in the full possession of my faculties. 

So that to-night, instead of saying east and west or north and south, I 
shall speak of toward the Atlantic Ocean or toward the Pacific Ocean, 
and toward North America or toward South America, meaning thereby 
to make myself better understood. 



Address of Mr. Olcott, of New York 75 

In the first place, the problems that surround the building of the canal 
have their inception in the physical features of the Isthmus itself. There- 
fore I can make myself better understood by describing, briefly, the 
Isthmus. 

Those of you who may look at a map of tlie Western Hemisphere will 
note a continuous chain of mountains running near the Pacific Coast, the 
entire range of both the North and South Americas. These mountains 
in the Northwest are known as the Cascade Range; in California they are 
known as the Sierra Nevada Range; in Mexico as the Sierra Madre Range, 
and in South America as the Andes Mountains. But it is all one chain of 
mountains, the backbone of the Western Hemisphere. At various points 
in lK)th North and South America that chain of mountains reaches a 
tremendous altitude, while at other points a lesser altitude: and in the 
Isthmus of Panama it sinks so low it might better be described as a range 
of hills than as a chain of mountains. 

Now, then, the earlier discoverers found in the Isthmus of Panama, 
along that range of hills, two hills. We will assume for a moment that 
the range runs this way [indicates] and the two hills stand like that [indi- 
cates]. Between those two hills is a low saddle. That low saddle con- 
stitutes the lowest point of land between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, 
from Alaska to Cape Horn. The early discoverers found that, and when 
the Panama Railroad was built they built their line through that low 
saddle, between those two hills. Afterwards, when the French company 
surveyed out the Panama Canal, they laid it out parallel, practically, with 
the railroad, and likewise running between those two low hills. Some 
man says, "How high are those hills?" The highest (me is on the South 
American side, known as Contractors Hill, and the lop of the hill is only 
662 feet above the level of the ocean. On the other side, the other hill is 
known as Gold Hill, and it is only a trifle over 400 feet in height; and the 
saddle between those two hills — the low point — is only 35 i feet above 
mean tide level. That 352 feet is only a little more than 100 yards 

"Well," some man says, "we have only got to dig down a hundred 
yards; why, we will get that canal finished in no time." But, softly, not 
so fast; because you must remember there would be not only that depth 
of 352 feet, but there would be the immense shelving of the banks, and 200 
feet or 400 feet width at the bottom, with two .sloping sides on a cut 9 
miles in length. When you get to moving that amount of dirt it is a little 
like moving Manhattan Island. 



76 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 

Now, then, let me speak for a moment of the rivers on the isthmus. 
The people who determined to dig the canal necessarily desired to take 
advantage of all the features of the Isthmus they could. Numerous small 
rivers take their head in this range of hills, part of them flowing into the 
Atlantic and part into the Pacific. One river flows from a point opposite 
the .saddle down into the Atlantic, some 23 miles. That is the Chagres 
River. On the Pacific side another river takes its rise near this saddle 
and flows into the Pacific. The name of that river is the Rio Grande. 

Reduced to its simplest terms, then, the plan of digging the canal is, 
commencing on the Atlantic side to dig up the valley of the Chagres River 
toward this saddle in the hills, then to cut through this saddle, then to 
dredge down the Rio Grande to the Pacific, all of which sounds very simple. 

Now, then, a word about those two rivers. The Chagres River, on the 
Atlantic side, is the larger of those two streams. In the dry season it is 
an inconsiderable stream. A man can stand on the bank and toss a pebble 
across the Chagres River in the dry season; but in the wet season it 
becomes a torrential and uncontrollable flood, frequently rising 20 feet in 
twelve hours. In that 23 miles between this saddle in the hills and the 
Atlantic Ocean the Chagres River winds back and forth across that valley; 
the line of the canal runs straight; it therefore happens that the Chagres 
River, between the base of the hills and the Atlantic Ocean, crosses the 
canal 23 times; therefore, if the uncontrollable flood of the Chagres River 
were turned haphazard into the canal, with its dirt and rotten banks, when 
the flood subsided the canal would be destroyed. Now, there is no other 
place to approach the Atlantic end of that canal except up the Chagres 
Valley. Therefore, in some manner the waters of the Chagres River must 
be harnessed and controlled; and the eminent .■\merican engineers on the 
Isthmus determined that, while they were harnessing the Chagres River, 
they would utilize its flood waters as an element in helping to construct the 
canal. 

Now, then, you will hear many men speak of a sea-level canal, as dis- 
tinguished from a lock canal. Reduced to its simplest terms. What is a 
sea-level canal? The Suez Canal, in the Old World, is a sea-level canal, 
dredged out through a great sandy region, and the ships thatgo into the 
Suez Canal travel the entire length of the canal upon the same level as the 
two oceans. In other words, a sea-level canal means simply a notch cut 
in the earth, not only down to sea level, but 40 feet below sea level, in 
order to furnish navigable water for ships to go through. That is what a 



Address of Mr. Olcott, of Xcw York 77 

sea-level canal is. And yet, it is proper to state, that while there is no lock 
in the Suez Canal, even if the Panama Canal were ever to be made a sea- 
level canal there would necessarily be at least one lock in the canal to be 
called a tidal lock. Why? Because of the difference in height of the tide 
in the two oceans. Now, don't misunderstand me, because the line of 
mean tide is the same all the world round. But the tide rises above the. 
line of mean tide and falls below the line. At Panama, on the Atlantic 
side, the tide rises 9 inches above mean tide and falls q inches below; on 
the Pacific coast side the tide rises not 9 inches, but 9 feet above mean 
tide and falls 9 feet below. Therefore, if that canal were dug with no 
tidal lock, you may imagine the disastrous ftjrce of that vast volume of 
water pouring unrestrained through the canal. 

But our canal is not to be, under the present plans, a sea-level canal. 
Let me assume that every one at this table is familiar in a way witli the 
operation of a canal and the locks therein. The ordinary canal, with 
which you and I are familiar, is a stream that flows gently down, following 
the contour of the country, having a gentle flow in one direction. When 
that stream is made into a canal, the canal instead of having a gentle flow, 
consists of a series of levels, with locks at various points. A lock in a 
canal is nothing more nor less than a cup. When both ends are closed the 
lock is separated entirely from the canal. When a boat is going down a 
canal the upper end is opened and the boat goes in upon the high level. 
Then the upper end is closed and the water is lowered in the lock, slowly, 
and the boat sinks down. Then the lower end is opened and the boat 
moves out upon the lower level. When a boat is ascending a canal the 
operation is reversed. The boat comes up on the lower level, sails into the 
lock and the lower end is closed; then the water is pumped into the lock 
until the boat rises to the high level, and the boat goes off on the high level. 

That is the way locks in all ordinary canals work. But the difference 
between the Panama Canal and the canals you and I are familiar with is 
that in most canals the slope is all one way. In the Panama Canal the 
slope is two ways. I take it that there are many men in this room who, 
in the days of their boyhood, attended the old schools where there was a 
stile that crossed the schoolhouse fence. Vou walked up three steps to 
the top of the fence, then stepped across the fence, and walked down 
three steps to the level of the ground on the other side. That, my friends, 
is a homely ])icture of the way the Panama Canal is being built. The ships 
will be raised, by a series of three locks, or three steps, to the level of 85 



78 Memorial Addresses: Reprcscnialive Cushman 

feet above the sea, and then floated across the backbone of the continent 
on the 85-foot level, and then let down on the Pacific side three steps more 
on that side. [Applause.] 

If you will indulge me just a moment — I will not weary you with any- 
thing indirect — but I want, just for a moment, to show you this picture, 
as I think it will give you a better idea. [Speaker exhibits a large map 
of the canal region and indicates points upon it as he continues his address.] 
This is the Atlantic end of the canal; this being the Pacific end of the 
canal; the chain of mountains is at this point, and the two high hills that 
I spoke of — one of them is located there — Contractors Hill — and Gold 
Hill is located a little diagonally across, like that [gesture]; and the deep 
cut is through this portion of the Isthmus. Now, I spoke a moment ago 
about the 85 -foot level of the canal; about raising a ship up 85 feet and 
floating it across the backbone of the continent. Some man will say that 
is easy, if you had plenty of water up there; but how are you going to 
pump water up to the 85-foot level? That, my friends, is where the 
harnessing of the Chagres River is made one of the great potential forces 
in the control of this canal. 

The Chagres Valley at this point [indicates] is about a mile and a half 
wide The Chagres River ordinarily flows down like this [indicates] and 
flows out into the ocean here [points]. It is proposed at this point [indi- 
cates] to dredge in from the Atlantic Ocean on the sea level to that point 
[indicates]; then to build there an immense dam, a mile and a half long, 
across the entire Chagres Valley and raise the height of the water 85 feet. 
When that height is reached, that will back the water up in this great lock 
clear back to this point [indicates]. Then they will dredge through this 
portion [indicates] by a series of locks, going down at this point [indicates] 
30 feet, and dropping 55 at the other two locks. 

Now, if you will look just for a moment at the lower part of this map you 
will get a bird's-eye view. 

Coming in on the Atlantic side, on the sea level, dredging out this 
material to this point [indicates], then the boat is raised by a series of 
three locks at the Gatun Dam to the 85-foot level and is then floated 
across. The red line indicates to where the dredging must be done. If a 
sea-level canal were to be built, the dredging would have to go down to this 
line [indicates]. But by raising the water to the 85 -foot level you see there 
is comparatively little dredging to be done imtil they reach this g-mile 



Address of Mr. Olcott, of Nciu York 79 

section at Culebra Cut; and then a series of locks on the other side, [Ap- 
plause] I fear I have already talked too long. [Cries of "No! No!"| 

It is an interesting subject. There stands at the Atlantic entrance of 
this canal to-day a heroic bronze statue — a statue of Christopher Colum- 
bus — placed there by the French people. The great discoverer stands in 
bronze, with his face fronting toward the Pacific, with his arm thrown 
around an Indian girl, pointing out the way of destiny toward the Pacific. 
That statue to-day represents, in a sense, the failure and humiliation of 
the French people. With no ill feeling toward them, but with the greatest 
spirit of kindness and charity, may I not say I hope that statue will yet 
mark the success of the American people where the French people have 
failed. [Applause I 

Mr. Toastmaster, those of us who are in jiolitics know that we can 
sometimes get a compliment out of the members of our own family, when 
the general public fails to rise to the bait. [Laughter ] Recently, in my 
own State — Washington — I was about to lie unanimously renominated 
for Congress. There was going to be a vast uprising among the people 
demanding my renomination. I knew that, because I had arranged it 
myself. [Laughter and applause.] And I knew that at some time during 
those proceedings I would be called out for an extempore speech: and I 
had a good one. [Laughter ] I had been extemporizing on it for about 
ten days. [Laughter. | And I wanted my mother to hear it. So I took 
her down to the opera house and put her in a box, and at the proper 
moment I came out and turned that speech loose. Gentlemen, it was 
not only the best speech that I ever made in my life, but at that particular 
time I thought it was the best speech that anybody ever made. [Laughter] 
When I got through and got over to where my mother was, I said, " Mother, 
what did you think of it?" 

"Why," she said, "Frank, it sorter seemed to me that you didn't 
improve all your opportunities." 

"Why," I said, "how is that, mother?" 

She said, " It seemed to me that you had several opportunities to sit 
down before you did!" [Applause] 

[Diners rose to their feet, cheered long, and sang in chorus, " He's a 
jolly good fellow."] 

Between the time that he delivered this speech and the pub- 
Hcation of the proceedings of the dinner this hfe of Cushm.'\n 



8o Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 

had passed away, and as an addenda to this pubHcation the 
president of the society, Dr. Neil Macphatter, wrote this tribute: 

It is with feelings of deep regret that we announce the death of the Hon. 
Francis \V. Cushman, who took such a conspicuous part in this banquet. 
The sad tidings of his death come to us as we go to press. Those who had 
the pleasure of being present at our annual dinner will recall the tender 
touches of wit and humor, the broad and keen insight, the commanding 
eloquence of this original man. The laughter and applause during his 
speech and at its finish, the great audience rising to their feet and cheering, 
are scenes that shall long be remembered. 

He had the soul and sympathies of a great and good man. 

Such was the impression that Cushman made on one occasion 
on those who had only seen him once, and those of us who were 
fortunate enough to have been associated with him constantly 
know so well that the closer the association and the more inti- 
mate the friendship the more he was beloved. 

Where is that spirit that woke our sympathetic admiration? 
It is inconceivable for any of us to believe it is destroved. 
Thank God, we believe in immortality and know that some- 
where that spirit is shedding its radiance on others as it did 
in this world. God bless Frank Cushman. 



Address of Mr. Englebright, of California 8i 



Address of Mr. Englebright, of California 

Mr. Speaker: As a member of the California delegation 1 
was a friend and a great admirer of the late Mr. Cushman, of 
Washington, and I know that I voice the sentiments o'f the 
people of the entire Pacific coast when I express the apprecia- 
tion in which they held him and their regret at his untimely 
death. 

In him the people of the far West lost one of their best friends 
in Congress, a man who worked assiduously for their every 
interest, who was as true as steel, and who will ever be remem- 
bered by them as one of their great public m.en. 

When we last saw him in this House none of us then realized 
that we would see him no more. The usual meeting, the usual 
parting, but that parting was a final one. To-day, in accord- 
ance with custom, we pay well-merited tributes of affection to 
his memory. The fact is, we are saving to him "good-bve," a 
word which — 

We say it for an hour or for years. 
We say it smiling, say it choked vvitli tears. 
We say it coldly, say it with a kiss; 
And yet we have no other word than this — 
"Good-bye." 

We have no dearer word for our heart's friend, 
For him who journeys to the world's far end, 
And sears our soul with going; this we say. 
As unto him who steps but o'er the way — 

"Good-bye." 
Alike to those Ve love, and those we hate, 
We say no more at parting at life's gate, 
To him who passes out beyond earth's sight. 
We cry, as to the wanderer for the night — 

"Good-bye." 

S0945 — H. Doc. 995. 6l-2 6 



82 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 

But while he has gone from our midst yet will he ever linger 
in our memory, and those of us who may be here in years to 
come will continually recall many incidents that happened in 
the past that endeared him to us, wherein he showed himself to 
be great in spirit, pure in heart, noble-minded in every action, 
and fruitful in his labors. 

Mr. Cushman was a self-made man, and his remarkable 
ability in this House as an orator showed his self-education and 
familiarity with every walk of life. As a debater he could 
hold his own, and his wit, which was never used for a petty 
purpose, was handed out as a keen weapon to defend what he 
believed to be right. 

As a Republican discussing the great principle of a protective 
American tariff, everyone knew where he stood. I will quote 
from one of his addresses : 

1 believe in the protection of American industry and the protection of 
American labor. Yes; I believe in it like the heathen believes in his idol. 
When I say that I am a protectionist, I thank my God I do not have to 
apologize to anybody for that belief. I can plant the feet of my faith on 
the pages of my country's history. 

So, on the great questions of conservation, rivers and harbors, 
the navv, and other national subjects, you always found him to 
the front with a clear and definite position, yielding his indi- 
vidual opinion at times for the good and welfare of the whole 
Nation, but faithful and true to the last. 

I first met Mr. Cushman in the second session of the Fifty- 
ninth Congress, and as a new Member of the House of Repre- 
sentatives found him to be a true friend, ready and willing to 
render assistance at all times in helping out a new i\lember, 
and a new Member appreciates a friend. 

As a Californian, I remember him with kindness, for on all 
occasions I found that the interests of the people that he rep- 
resented coincided with those of my own State. I found hira 
always fighting for the good of the whole Pacific coast. 



Address of Mr. Enqlebriqht, of California 83 

So, to-day, in behalf of the people of the great far West, I 
express their deep gratitude and their appreciation of the serv- 
ice he rendered to them and the pride and affection in which 
they will ever hold and treausure his meniorv. 

In conclusion, I speak for the entire membership of this House, 
and say to the Hon. Frank W. Cushman, with all the friend- 
ship, all the love, all the sincerity, all the honor and respect 
that can be given to the word, "Good-by." 

Mr. Speaker, I move that ^Members of the House be granted 
five days to print or extend their remarks in the Record on the 
life and death of Hon. Frank W. Cushman. 

The Speaker pro tempore (Mr. Humphrey, of Washington, 
in the chair). The gentleman from California moves that, for 
the period of five days. Members of the House may have leave 
to print remarks on the life and death of Hon. Frank W. 
Cushman. Is there objection? [After a pause.] The Chair 
hears none. 



84 



Proceedings in the Senate 



PROCEEDINGS IN THE SENATE 



Saturday, May 21, igio. 

The Chaplain, Rev. Ulysses G. B. Pierce, D. D., offered the 
following prayer: 

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, for this day of tender 
recollections, when those who have labored by our side and 
have shared our councils live again in memory, we thank Thee, 
whom the living and the dead evermore praise. 

Sanctify to us, we pray Thee, the exercises of this day, and 
unite our hearts and our lives with those who, having fought the 
good fight, having kept the faith, and having finished their 
course, have received the crown of righteousness, and have laid 
hold of life eternal. 

And unto Thee, who art our God and our Savior, who callest 
us into Thine everlasting kingdom, will we ascribe glory and 
praise, now and for evermore. Amen. 

The Vice-President. The Chair lays before the Senate 
resolutions of the House of Representatives, which will be read. 

The Secretarv read the resolutions, as follows: 

Ix THE Hoi'SE OF REPRESENT.'\TIVES, 

April 2, igjo. 

Resolved, That the business of the House be now suspended that 
opportunity may be given for tributes to the memory of Hon. Fr.^ncis 
W. CuSHMAN, late a Member of this House from the State of Wash- 
ington. 

Resolved, That as a particular mark of respect to the memory of the 
deceased, and in recognition of his distinguished public career tlie House, 
at the conclusion of these exercises, shall stand adjourned. 

Resolved, That the Clerk communicate these resolutions to the Senate. 

Resolved, That the Clerk send a copy of these resolutions to the family 
of the deceased. 



Proceedings in the Senate 85 

Mr. Piles. Mr. President, I offer the following resolutions, 
and ask for their adoption. 

The VicS-PrEsident. The resolutions submitted by the 
Senator from Washington will be read. 

The resolutions were read, considered by unanimous consent, 
and unanimously agreed to, as follows : 

Resolved, That the Senate expresses its profound sorrow on account 
of the death of Hon. Fr.wcis W. Cushman, late a Member of the House 
of Representatives from the State of Washington. 

Resolved, That the business of the Senate he suspended in order that 
fitting tributes be paid to his memory. 

Resolved, That the Secretary communicate a copy of these resolutions 
to the House of Representatives and to the widow and family of the 
deceased. 



86 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 



MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 



Address of Mr. Piles, of WASfflNOTON 

Mr. President: In the death of Francis W. Cushman the 
country has lost a notable and patriotic public man — a man 
possessed of strong mentality, of a fine sense of gentle but 
genuine humor, and of a keen perception of his duty to himself, 
his fellow-men, and his country. 

One of the most impressive lessons taught by our history is 
that, however humble a man's origin or destitute his circum- 
stances, there is no legal or artificial limit to his achievements. 

Daily we come in contact with men to whom nobleness seems 
native, and we seldom stop to review the first pages of their 
history, their privations and struggles, until the last chapter is 
ended. It is then that we read the tables of their lives, and as 
we read we marvel. vSuch a man — of innate nobility and of 
checkered career — was Frank Cushman. 

He was not born to that which so often proves a misfortune — 
an inheritance of wealth— but to a life of toil, which calls forth 
the best energies and the noblest purposes of man. 

His father was a physician and surgeon, who had ser^'ed his 
country in the civil war and whose services were constantly at 
the command of his neighbors, though with little thought of 
reward. Bevond an economical living he did not seek to go, 
and made no accumulation of wordly goods. 

His mother, Elizabeth Newell Cushman, now living at an 
advanced age, is a woman of high purpose and character, 
endowed with a wealth of common sense and quaint humor. 
From her broad and vigorous mind his own undoubtedly drew, 
in a large degree, its humor and its strength. 



Address of Mr. Piles, of IVasIiiugton 87 

Mr. CuSHMAN was born at Brighton, Iowa, May 8, 1867. 
He received his education in the common schools and at a 
Quaker academy at Pleasant Plains, in that vState. In order to 
defray his expenses at the academy he worked on a farm, in 
a country store, and as water boy for a section crew. 

At the age of 17 he went to Wyoming, where he remained for 
five vears, w^orking in the various capacities of ranch or farm 
hand, cowboy, and school-teacher. 

Notwithstanding the arduous duties young Cushman had to 
perform, in order to rise superior to his situation he availed 
himself of every opportunity to develop his mind; and, with 
the tenacitv peculiar to men strong in the determination to 
succeed, he gathered knowledge from the books he had carried 
across the plains and from those he could borrow from his 
neighbors. Thus he laid the foundation which enabled him 
to achieve success in the practice of the law and in the discharge 
of the duties of the high position which he subsequently occupied. 

In 1889 he removed to Nebraska, where he practiced law for 
two years, when, being attracted by the marv^elous opportunities 
held out to young men in the State of Washington, he removed 
to the city of Tacoma in 1891, where he continued to reside 
until his death. 

When Mr. Cushman reached the State of Washington he was 
but 24 vears of age — I might say still a boy — with but little 
professional experience, a stranger without money, and with no 
friend or relative to stand sponsor for him or bring him into 
public notice; but he had intelligence, industry, ambition, 
courage, and honesty — the qualities necessary to make men 
great. 

Those who looked upon him in the flush of his young manhood, 
nineteen vears ago, might well have exclaimed: 

How beautiful is youth! How bright it gleams, 
With its allusions, aspirations, dreams ! 



88 Memorial Addresses: Representative Ciishman 

Book of Beginnings, Story without End, 
Each maid a heroine and each man a friend ! 
Aladdin's Lamp and Fortunatus' Purse, 
That holds the treasures of the universe. ! 
^ All possibilities are in its hands; 

No danger daunts it, and no foe withstands; 
In its sublime audacity of faith, 
"Be thou removed," it to the mountain saith, 
And with ambitious feet, secure and proud, 
Ascends the ladder leaning on the cloud. 

But voung and inexperienced as he was, he was not altogether 
unprepared for the struggle before him. He had been reared in 
the school of adversity. He had, at the age of 24, come to 
understand that "kites rise against, not with the wind," and that 
"no man ever worked his passage in a dead calm." 

Possessing the qualities I have mentioned, this aspiring youth 
was destined to succeed. As hard as his lot seemed when he 
cast it with those who learned in later years to love him so well, 
there was, after all, an element of good fortune in the situation, 
which he soon came to know and which ser\'ed him to advantage. 
He discovered that he had settled among a kind-hearted, liberal, 
broad-minded people, who were quick to recognize merit and 
generous in their appreciation of it. 

Among this people Mr. Cushman practiced law with extraor- 
dinary success until his election to Congress in 189S, and would 
have won distinction in his profession had he not been lured 
away from it to enter the field of politics. In that field he found 
ample opportunity for his intellecttial and oratorical powers. 
He had a stvle of speech which was picturesque and singularly 
fascinating and which indelibly impressed itself upon the 
memorv. Those who heard him make a campaign speech once 
were eager to hear him again whenever opportunity offered. 
From beginning to end through his speeches ran a vein of 



Address of Mr. Piles, of [V'asliiiigton 89 

original humor, which captured the hearts of his audience and 
which added greatly to his effectiveness. 

As rich and as powerful as was his humor, however, he did 
not, I am happy to say, use it to wound, but to illustrate and 
convince; and if, as Carlyle says, "True humor springs not 
more from the head than from the heart," then Mr. Ci'SHM.^n 
possessed it to a greater degree than any other man it has been 
my fortune to know. 

At the time of his death he was widely known, and his name 
had become a household word throughout his State. It is not 
too much to say that, had he lived, his hold upon the people was 
such that he could have represented his district in the House 
or the Commonwealth in this bod\' during his pleasure. His 
popularity with the people was firmly grounded upon solid and 
enduring qualities of mind and heart, which fitted him admirably 
for public ser\'ice. 

He was sound in his convictions upon all those great questions 
which enter vitally into the welfare of the country. He had the 
courage of his opinions and would not yield them up for any 
consideration personal to himself, however great the political 
prize. He believed that the best way to solve a problem was to 
applv the truth to it, and he did this freely and fearlessly and at 
times when personal policy might have dictated a different 
course. 

Mr. CuSH.MAN entered Congress when he was but 31 years of 
age, and served there without interruption until his imtimely 
death. 

His first speech in the House attracted the attention of the 
country and set hira apart as a genius. Whenever he spoke 
there afterwards, it was always to a crowded House and 
galleries. 

The longer he remained in Congress the more popular he 
became with his associates and with the people at large. No 



go Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 

one who knew him, who came- in personal contact with him, 
who saw the kindly, generous soul that shone constantly through 
his mild blue eyes, who heard him talk, who listened to his 
stories alternating with touches of humor and pathos, could fail 
to appreciate his kindness of heart, his honesty of mind, his 
love of truth, his steadfastness of purpose, and his adherence to 
principle. 

This, ^Mr. President, is neither the time nor the place to dwell 
upon his loyalty to his friends, his devotion to his family; but 
permit me to say, in passing, that his considerate and loving 
spirit, his sunny temperament, and the gentleness of his nature 
consecrated and made beautiful his home and united all hearts 
to his in an indissoluble tie. He was all that one brother might 
wish for in another, all that a wife might hope for in a husband, 
all that a mother might pray for in a son. 

He was by nature mentally strong, but physically weak. 
Notwithstanding his delicate constitution, however, he was 
tireless in his labors. Indeed, he was the most energetic man 
I ever knew. His was the energy which "poverty and disease 
could not impair, and which death itself destroyed rather than 
subdued," and there is little doubt that his incessant applica- 
tion to his congressional duties had much to do with bringing 
on his fatal illness. 

He fell at the most important period of his career, in the 
prime of mental strength, and in the fullness of manhood. 

Why man should thus be stricken is one of those "mysteries 
which heaven will not have earth to know." 

Leaves have their time to fall, 

And flowers to wither at the north wind's breath, 
And stars to set — but all, 

Thou hast all seasons for thine own, O Death. 

Frank Cushm.an lived and died as a brave man should. He 
fought every battle with the courage characteristic of the brave. 



Address of Mr. Piles, of \\'asliingt07i 91 

For two days I stood by his bedside watching him in his last 
contest. He made a heroic fight, but the odds were too great, 
the struggle too unequal, the conflict, while short, altogether 
too long. His frail and weakened body was unable longer to 
withstand the terrible strain to which his unconquerable spirit 
had subjected it, and after an illness of less than two weeks, on 
the morning of the 6th of July, his soul passed from this into 
another and better world. 

The character of few men has been more generously or more 
justly treated by press, pulpit, and bar than was his. Universal 
sorrow was expressed that a great and sympathetic heart had 
ceased to beat, a brilliant mind to scintillate. 

The esteem in which he was held at home was manifested in 
every city, town, and hamlet. 

In the beautiful park which he secured for his adopted citv 
the people of his State will build a monument to perpetuate his 
memory and to stand as a loving and fitting tribute to his worth 
and work. 

That the coming generations might know and appreciate his 

sterling manhood and the story of his rise from obscurity to 

fame, I would, if it were given to me, inscribe upon his cenotaph : 

It is not helps but obstacles, not facilities but difficulties, that make 
men. 



92 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cusliman 



Address of Mr. Beveridge, of Indiana 

Mr. President: He who works his way from youth to 
manhood, he to whom obstacles are opportunities and diffi- 
culties a test of strength, he who walks forward in the world 
relying on nothing but merit and with that winning livelihood, 
position, influence, such a man is the typical American, and 
such a one was Francis W. Cushman. He was poor; he made 
poverty an asset. He had no powerful relatives, no influential 
friends to aid him. Everything he got in life he won — won by 
solid work of hand and brain. He inherited no property; no 
family name gave him position which he did not earn; no 
distinguished relative fashioned his career. 

He depended upon himself. He earned his bread from the 
sweat of his face. He was a water boy on a building railroad; a 
section hand, and then a cowboy and a lumber jack. He was 
a school-teacher, too, and studied that he might teach. In all 
the wearv years of his early life of drudgery he worked to the 
limit of his strength by day and studied to the limit of his 
endurance bv night. During the years when young men of our 
so-called better classes are being supported through college by 
their fathers, Frank Cushman was earning by hard labor the 
food he ate and the clothes he wore. In the summers during 
that period of life when boys of our so-called polite class are 
having their vacations, playing tennis, boating, shooting, Frank 
Cushman was toiling in the blazing sun. 

And so little by little he built his life and built it solidly, 
built muscle and built brain, but, above all, built character. 
Hard as is such a life, it has one supreme advantage — it gets in 
touch with the eternal verities. A man so grown and seasoned 
conies to know in a peculiarly intimate way honor and kindness. 



Address of Mr. Beveridge, of Indiana 93 

self-help and self-sacrifice, pity and tolerance, courage and 
steadfastness. 

And when such an one conies to manhood's years and man- 
hood's work and duties, he rebels at no burden — he has been 
trained to burdens; his heart faints not at sudden misfortunes; 
it has been disciplined to meet them. 

Such an one is never peevish, never bitter; he has himself 
known want and hardship, has had his physical, spiritual, and 
mental muscles hardened to meet them, and understands the 
weakness of his looser-fibered fellow human beings who never 
had his own hard, wholesome training. 

I find that only the extremely selfish are unkind; and the 
selfish man or woman may well be — nay, often is — one vv-ho 
apparently is generous and companionable, but who all the time 
is thinking only of his own comfort, his own advancement, his 
own interests. Often the apparently selfish man is he whom 
e.xacting circumstance has forced to be intent upon his task 
during those years when character is forming, so that absorp- 
tion in his every task to the point of unconsciousness of all else 
while he is doing it becomes the habit of his life. Yet such a 
man who meets each day's events with a fearlessness so stern 
that it expresses itself in a smile usually has a heart of simplest 
brotherhood, a soul of sweet forgiveness, and a mind that com- 
prehends his brother's shortcomings even as it comprehends 
his own shortcomings. 

Thus we find that only such a man really speaks the language 
of the people. Only such a man ever has blood sympathy with 
the masses. The people know him with that deepest of all 
knowledge — the knowledge of instinct. Other men may have 
intellectual kinship with the millions that never belongs to 
them in deep reality. Only he whose earliest years have been 
spent in shoulder touch with humanity's common toil can 



94 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 

interpret the aspirations or even deeply know the needs of his 
fellow-men. 

When I say this, I think of a rising circumstance in American 
life. In Europe there are ruling classes. I do not mean nobility 
only and kings; but a class of men who from father to son for 
generations have been public servants. It begets a sort of 
sense of responsibility to their people that possibly yields some 
results. 

But as yet there is nothing of that kind here in America; yet 
something begins to approach it. I have observed a tendency 
in the last few vears to invite young men of wealth into public 
life, as though public life belonged to them as of light. I say, 
"yes; welcome them; but let them earn the knowledge of the 
people they would serAe by first ser\-ing in common touch with 
the people. Until then they do not deserve public office." 

I notice occasionally that it is taken for granted that the 
sons of distinguished pubhc men, dead or alive, should have a 
place in our official service by appointment — a sort of heredi- 
tary station. That is serious as a matter of national develop- 
ment; but it is not intolerable, if they really deser\-e it; if 
thev have truly fitted themselves for it; but let them first do 
what Francis W. Cushman did through necessity, and what 
every man who really knows the American people nmst do — - 
get in touch with the American people by performing the usual 
and daily tasks of our common American life. 

Wendell Phillips said in his great Phi Beta Kappa address, 
perhaps the most inspiring utterance of his life, "That the men 
whose names have become household words for liberty in every 
nation in the world, the men who have gathered to their hearts 
the aspirations of the millions whom they served, have been men 
who come from the grass roots, and because they have come 
from the grass roots they have reached the stars." Above all 



Address of Mr. Beveridge, 0} Indiana 95 

other human types, such a man was Abraham Lincohi. In a 
lesser, cruder, and a fiercer way, such, too. was Andrew Jackson. 
Of the same type and strain, though on a lesser scale, of course, 
was Fra.n'cis W. Ci'shmax. 

The man who has led such a life as Franxis W. Cusiiman 
led often wonders v.hat life is really for. It seems unfair that 
all one's days should be spent in combat and struggle. Fate, 
after all, is a curious arranger of destinies. Clotho, Lachesis, 
and Atropos work out strange patterns in their spinning, weav- 
ing, and severing. No human being asked to be bom, none ask 
to die. Yet coming hither and going hence without our consent, 
one man is bom with the advantage of wealth without having 
earned it and another is bom to star\'ing poverty without 
having deser\'ed it. 

But it is useless to question, impossible to explain. It is a 
part of the insoluble mystery of human life and destiny. It 
may be, after all, that the man who himself with hand and 
brain has personally earned everything in life, earned everv 
mouthful of food and every thread of clothing, earned every 
honor and worked out every achievement — perhaps, after all, 
such a man's soul knows a rejoicing so deep and calm and real 
that his apparently more fortunate brother never possibly can 
know. 

After all, perhaps the man whom fortune helps, who has most 
things given him or, at least, arranged for his easy taking, is 
restless and unhappy in those conversations with himself, which 
he carries on within the cloister of his own soul, because not 
havang wrought out for himself the things he has, he knows in 
his heart that he does not deserve them, and is in a certain sense 
a fraud. 

So, perhaps, Francis Cushmax, like other men of this sterling 
and genuine class, enjoyed an internal glory and heart satisfac- 
tion that others can never know. 



96 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 

About that we may speculate, but we can not determine; 
but this we know, that such men as Francis Cushman served 
their fellow-men, and ser\'ed them genuinely; this we know, 
that the rest of us are the better that such men as Francis 
Cushman lived; and this we surely know, that the millions of 
American boys handicapped with poverty, friendless, and alone 
may yet achieve as highly for themselves and for their fellow- 
men as Francis Cushman did, if they, like him, will pay the 
price of heartbeats. 

From every viewpoint he was a success. The coin of his life 
was unalloyed gold. He was true to himself, he was faithful to 
friends, he was a noble public ser\-ant ; and when he went away 
he left his State and the Nation, and, through them, mankind, 
his debtor. 

Francis W. Cushman never lost his enthusiasms or his faith. 
I noticed that while the Senator from Washington [Mr. Piles] 
was speaking, he referred to "the illusions of youth." The 
finest thing of all the fine things about Francis W. Cushman, 
and of every man I know who is fortunate enough to retain 
them, is their holding fast to the so-called "illusions of youth," 
and therefore to the youth of the soul itself. Is life an "illu- 
sion?" No! Are honor or liberty or human sympathy illu- 
sions? No! Are human rights illusions? No. You may think 
them so, but I tell you no. Is the Republic an illusion? He 
is a traitor to freedom who says so. Is heaven "an illusion?" 
Is God "an illusion?" Never! They are the only enduring 
realities. 

A man pavs a high price here in Washington or elsewhere 
in life when he goes into a task full of faith that God lives 
and the eternal verities rule, who goes to his work inspired by 
that belief — he pays a heavy price, I say, when he surrenders 
that faith for the technique of cunning — the skill in "working 
upon men." A trust in God is better than craft in little politics. 



Address of Mr. Btmeridge, of Indiana 97 

All of us have seen through life — and I think it is life's great 
problem how we may avoid it — that this burning and splendid 
faith of youth in all things righteous and in their prevailing 
gives way after a few years of contact to the cynic's scorching 
sneer; and that glorious enthusiasm which paints the skies of 
our earlier years with a tint from heaven itself settles down 
to a callous and unbelieving calm. Out upon such so-called 
worldly wisdom! It is the subtlety of the pit in place of the 
supreme heights of a real and a clean intelligence. 

I have in mind one statesman who has within the last few 
years passed from this body, one of the verv greatest construc- 
tive legislators the country ever produced. He lived to be 80, 
or thereabouts. He held the admiration, the confidence, and 
the affection of every man in this chamber. And vet, up to the 
day of that great man's death — and I refer to Senator Orville 
H. Piatt, of Connecticut — his faith was as pure as the stars, 
his enthusiasms as strong and simple as those of a child or an 
angel — for both are the same. 

To him honor meant something; to him the destinv of the 
Republic meant something; to him heaven was a realitv; to 
him God was the greatest, the only final fact in all existence. 

All this was not for him mere lip service. It was a belief 
that flowed in his blood. So every one of the great problems 
of statesmanship that he attacked, he did it with his mind 
of faith and with the heart of youth. He kept the great gift of 
enthusiasm, with which in our beginnings Ciod endows us all, 
until the final day when he stepped across — and only stepped 
across — to the added glory of the enfranchised soul itself. 

One beautiful thing, then, about Fr.akcis W. Cushm.xn was 
that he, too, never for a moment abated the so-called "illusions 
of youth." "The illusions of youth 1" They are in realit\- the 
only eternal truths; they are the only things that reallx' endure. 

50945— H. Doc. 995, 61-2 7 



98 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 

Your plots and plans, your schemes, your ambitions, your 
intrigues, and all things that make the warp and woof of the 
little business of to-day will disappear, and they can not dis- 
appear too soon. But the "illusions of youth" will continue as 
long as the race itself is perpetuated and as long as the angels 
dwell in God's heaven. 

So the finest thing in Fr.\ncis Cushman's life was that, 
although he was a section hand at 15, although he was a lumber 
jack at 16, although all his life he toiled, although he entered 
politics and was successful, although he "knew the game" as 
well as the craftiest and trickiest player, yet finally when God 
called him he went in response, with his faith still firm, his 
illusions unimpaired, and his enthusiasms exalted. Of the most 
intellectual man in America, I have prayed that these priceless 
endowments might be retained for him; and for all of us may 
the Father grant that, whatever else befalls us, heaven's faith 
and youth's enthusiasms may be ours till our final and everlast- 
ing release and reward. 



Address of Mr. Clapp, of Mi)i)icsota 99 



Address of Mr. Clapp, of Minnesota 

Mr. President: It was Emerson, I think, who said America 
was another term for opportunity. Broad as are the oppor- 
tunities of America, yet, after all, it is difficult to assign to a 
man his true place in relationship to his fellows; for human 
achievement involves, first, the law of possibilities, and, second, 
the law of limitations. Possibility involves two classes — 
those which are inherent in the individual and those which are 
extraneous or external to the individual. The same division 
appears in limitations. There are those limitations which are 
inherent in the individual, and there are those limitations which, 
to the individual, are extraneous. In this complex mingling of 
possibility and limitation it is always difficult to assign a man 
to his proper place in his relation to his fellow-men. I know 
of no character which illustrates this law better, perhaps, than 
that of Napoleon. 

When the French Revolution came with chaos the inevitable 
sequence was to be the restoration of order. The restoration of 
order meant leadership; and that possibility was open to every 
Frenchman save, of course, those in whose veins coursed the 
blood of royalty. To them it was barred. But to none did it 
come save to Napoleon. 

The French Revolution being premature in its relation to the 
growth of sentiment to sustain the permanent establishment of 
a republic, the restoration of a throne was inevitable. That was 
a condition which presented itself to everv Frenchman save 
those of royal blood. And yet but one rose to the great occa- 
sion, and that was Napoleon. Thus were linked together the 
inherent possibilities and the extraneous possibilities. There we 
reach the end of the possibilities in the life of Napoleon Bona- 



loo Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushnuui 

parte. We come then to the limitations which surrounded him. 
When republican France gathered her energies to turn back 
the tide of invasion that had poured over her frontiers she car- 
ried her military operations beyond her frontiers, and wherever 
republican armies went republican spirit, and in many instances 
republican institutions, followed. 

But when it became necessary to reestablish a throne in 
France, those institutions could no longer exist as a menace to 
monarchy in France, and they had to give way again to mon- 
archy, and those people who had gathered from French inspira- 
tion a dawning gleam of liberty saw that liberty taken away 
from them by this great leader, and gratitude gave way to a 
resentment, deep and undying. 

More than that, the man who might lull France to sleep with 
dreams of glorv while he forged the chains of a monarchy had 
to be born outside a palace. The French Revolution differed 
from the English Revolution in this: The dethronement of 
Charles had the semblance of law and order and judicial pro- 
cedure, but the dethronement of I^ouis was merely the rage of an 
unorganized and uncontrolled spirit, and that spirit flaunted its 
victorv in the face of all the royalty of Europe as it held before 
their gaze the head of the dethroned king; and the man who 
was the product of that condition could not die in peace upon a 
throne. He might surround himself with the pomp and pagean- 
try of imperial power; he might at heart be a despot; but his 
throne was a menace to hereditary royalty, and there arose 
before him a limitation which no human genius could surmount. 

Historians love to tell what might have happened had Water- 
loo been a victory for Napoleon instead of a defeat. It matters 
not to human history what that result might have been, save 
in the personnel of the dead and wounded. But had Waterloo 
been a \ictory for Napoleon, defeat would have come else- 



Address 0} Mr. Clapp, of Minnesota loi 

where, for no human t:;enius could surmount that wall of limi- 
tation which had developed around this man's pathway. I 
speak of this to illustrate the strange mingling of possibility 
and limitation. 

Grant is another illustration of the mingling of the inherent 
and the extraneous possibilities. Had it not been for the 
repeated misfortunes, to use no harsher term, of the generals in 
command of the eastern annies. Grant's career would have 
been limited to the West. But even had one of the eastern gen- 
erals been successful and thus forever have prevented Grant 
from occupying that broader field, yet, nevertheless, the his- 
torian would have had to inscribe for Grant the legend of pre- 
eminent greatness as a leader, because, within the range of those 
opportunities that came from the combining of inherent and ' 
extraneous possibilities. Grant had succeeded at every step. 

That is the only true test of greatness along the line of achieve- 
ment, and applying that test to the life of Francis W. Cush- 
MAN we must attribute to him greatness in a great degree, 
because no matter how humble his work, no matter what sphere 
he worked in, whether it was with the inherent possibility or 
the combining of inherent and extraneous possibilities, Francis 
W. CusHMAN measured to the full extent of the opportunity 
brought about by the combination. 

Entering Congress he immediately assumed an important posi- 
tion, and as the years rolled by he grew in his power and influ- 
ence, and measured by that test, we may well say that had 
not death terminated his career a broader field would have 
opened for his achievement. 

But, Mr. President, there is a higher test of greatness than 
all this, and that is the real character and purpose of a man, 
and measured by that test again, we must give the palm of 
greatness to Francis W. Cushman, a man of unyielding. 



I02 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 

unswerving fidelity to purpose and conviction, and it was this 
that contributed so much to the respect in which he was held. 

Mr. CusHM.\N entered public life at a time when the American 
people were gradually crystallizing to a set and permanent 
policy along a great line of economic development. He threw 
himself into that struggle with all the strength and ardor of 
his being, until he might have been said to have knelt at the 
shrine of that policy. There came a time when in the changing 
conditions, ever being evolved in a growing countrv where con- 
ditions must be constantly changing, it seemed to many that 
there should be a modification of that policy. But Fra.mcis W. 
Cushman never recognized the necessity for any modification. 
His convictions had been welded in a struggle that had left him 
where he could see no reason for change or modification; and I 
am inclined to think it is well that in this country there are 
some men who, not actuated by the thought of the loss of their 
own power and prestige but from firm conviction, can stand 
against the too rapid transformation that is inseparablv asso- 
ciated with growing conditions and changing conditions. 

It so happens that in free governnient, especially, all change 
of conditions necessarily comes from that only test of wisdom 
this side of divine wisdom itself, namely, the consensus of pur- 
pose of a great and intelligent citizenship. It so happens that 
these changes, of necessity, are more or less aligned with jiopular 
demand, and it may be that even the strongest of those who 
believe in change and modification are somewhat moved and 
swerved, somewhat hastened, perhaps, in their recognition for 
the necessity of modification by the fact that it comes from 
popular demand. 

So it is well that under that condition the changing jiolicies 
and purposes of a great people may be held somewhat in check 
by the stern character of a man like Ctsh.max, who, devoted 



Address of Mr. Clapp, of Minnesota 103 

to a principle for which he had battled for years, could see 
no necessity for change or modification. 

At all events, Mr. President, it is well for this Republic that 
we have men of his sterling character. His life should be an 
inspiration to the youth of this land. His life was an exempli- 
fication of the purposes and policies of his land, and in his death 
his country suffers as well as mourns. 



I04 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 



Address of Mr. Carter, of Montana 

Mr. President: The poverty of our language forbids the 
expression of our deepest feeling, our tenderest emotions, or our 
best thoughts on an occasion like this. On the desk of every 
Senator is found two programmes of memorial exercises for 
the day, the one, Hon. Francis W. Cushman, late a Represent- 
ative from the State of Washington, and the other, Hon. 
David A. De Armond, late a Representative from the State 
of Missouri. 

These two memories might well be considered together. 
While they represented districts far remote from each other 
and were of different schools of political thought, they were 
known in the House of Representatives as able, devoted, and 
loj'al representatives of their respective districts and parties. 

De Armond was a disciple of Jefferson. Cushman implicitly 
believed in the doctrines of Hamilton. They disagreed upon 
fundamental principles and theories of government. Their 
disagreements were honest and each respected the convictions 
of the other. They embraced within the scope of their re- 
spective party views all of the essential features relating to 
government in theory and practice. Between them issues were 
never clouded. 

In Congress and on the rostrum throughout the country each 
spoke in clear and ringing tones for the faith that was in him 
and the right as he conceived it to be. 

They dealt with principles and policies on lines of logic and 
with an earnestness born of patriotism and devotion to duty. 
No two public men of our times were more thoroughly repre- 
sentative of the two theories of government which have pre- 
vailed in this countrv from the foundation of our svstem. 



Address of Mr. Carter, of Montana 105 

Their broad conceptions embraced and disposed of all the 
ephemeral issues seized upon by smaller minds as temporary 
rallying points for party organisms and activities. 

According to their method all important issues could be 
fairly presented to the electors and decided in accordance with 
the judgment of the majority, leaving the disposition of the 
great mass of public business exempt from partisan disputes 
and subject only to constitutional limitations and just consid- 
eration for the public welfare. 

In the keeping of either of these men the interests of a dis- 
trict were safe, and the destinies of the whole nation might 
have been, with perfect confidence, committed to either of 
them. 

As long as free government endures, political parties will 
exist, because they supply the machinery through which issues 
are framed and presented for the decision of the ruling power — 
the body of the people. 

The demagogue triumphs for an hour, a day, or a year by 
espousing the popular side of a subordinate issue involving 
passing passion, prejudice, or fallacy; but the public man who 
is devoted to elementary principles will successfully combat 
the fancy of the hour, the day, or the year, serenely confident 
of ultimate success, because of his faith in the eternal triumph 
of righteousness and justice. De Armond and Cushm.an would 
each have faced a mob, would each have encountered defeat, 
and preferred it while standing for the political faith in which 
he believed. Through such men political issues are squarely 
tried, because they go to trial on the issue, despising resorts 
to evasion or expediency. The demagogue is dangerous be- 
cause he seeks to inflame rather than to correct the excesses 
of passion. The statesman justifies his claim to enduring fame 
by standing as a rallying point for correct but discredited 



io6 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 

principles in tijnes of turmoil and excitement. It matters not 
that De Armond stood for extreme conservatism and Cushman 
for the aggressive, progressive, and daring spirit of the age. 
Each stood for something definite, and the people could ahvavs 
locate these two central ideas by the position taken bv these 
two men, who adhered with unvarying loyalty to their respec- 
tive standards. By nature De Armond was in favor of slow 
and cautious movement. He revered ancient traditions and 
resisted innovation, just as Cushman believed in the age in 
which he lived as the best of all the ages, and, so believing, 
was willing to create new precedents by moving forward with 
unlimited confidence into new and unexplored regions. In a 
sense the one was pessimistic and doubtful of the present and 
the future, while the other was optimistic and confidently be- 
lieved in the doctrine of evolution. 

The lives of De Armond and Cushman will endure as a 
standing refutation of the oft-repeated assertion that a century 
and a quarter of experience leaves our country under our sys- 
tem bereft of opportunity for struggling men. 

They reached distinction through different parties — parties 
directly opposed to each other. The avenues for advancement 
from obscurity were found to be open to these struggling men 
in each of the great parties arrayed along political lines, pre- 
cisely as to the vision of normal men the avenues of advance- 
ment are open to-day more widely than ever before for worthy 
and struggling men in every field of endeavor in this country. 

In our dav the word of encouragement and the helping hand 
are reached out in all parties and in all avenues of life to the 
honest, the ambitious, and the industrious. This has been so 
from the beginning, and our political life furnishes the most 
abundant evidence of the fact. The only man who is handi- 
capped in the political affairs of this country to-day — the only 



Address of Mr. Carter, of Mo)iiaua 107 

man who was handicapped in the days of \\'ashington and 
Jackson and Lincohi — is he who was born with a silver spoon 
in his mouth, born with the handicap of wealth and station to 
be overcome. The boy from the log cabin on the frontier finds 
a godspeed and a welcome everywhere. The features of the 
life of Abraham Lincoln around which our affections cluster 
most fondly now are the features which were identified with 
obscurity and suffering and trial. So it is with the biographv 
of every man who has figured prominently in the history of 
our country. 

The American people constitute a separate and independent 
race, a composite race made up of contributions from all the 
world outside. Probably we represent the best development of 
the Aryan race the world has known, or ever will know, be- 
cause no such theater remains for assembling the elements as 
this virgin continent presented four centuries ago. Character 
building has been in progress in all the States and communi- 
ties of this country from the beginning, and whatever mav 
be said of the power, the wealth, the pomp and circumstance 
of place, the fact is now as it has ever been in this country of 
ours, that character, integrity, and unselfish devotion to dutv 
are at a higher premium in the United States than those quali- 
ties have ever attained in the estimation of mankind anvwhere 
else. 

The biographies of these two distinguished men, who latelv 
departed this life, as Representatives, one from ^Missouri and 
the other from Washington, are instructive, and to the vouth 
of this country, Mr. President, they are inspiring. The auto- 
biography of David A. De Armond, of Missouri, was written 
up as approved by him in just six lines. He had reached a 
high place in Congress. He was regarded as one of the invin- 
cible debaters in that remarkable forum, the House of Repre- 
sentatives. He had few equals and no superiors there. Yet 



io8 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 

this modest man, responding to the call from the printer, 
wrote all that he cared to write about himself in just six lines, 
and the two opening lines read as follows : 

David Albaugh De Armond, Democrat, of Butler, was born in Blair 
County, Pa., March i8, 1844; was brought up on a farm; educated in 
the common schools. 

In a few brief lines on page 132 of the same edition of the 
Directory appears this brief statement: 

Francis W. Cushman, Republican, of Tacoma, was born May 8, 1867, 
at Brighton, Washington County, Iowa; was educated chiefly at the high 
school in Brighton and at the Pleasant Plain Academy, of Jefferson 
County, Iowa; he assisted himself in securing an education by working 
as a "water boy" on the railroad in the summer time and attending school 
in the winter time; after the completion of his school course he worked for 
a time as a common laborer or "section hand" on the railroad; at the age 
of 16 he moved to the then Territory of Wyoming, where he remained for 
five years working as a cowboy on a ranch, in a lumber camp, teaching 
school, and studying law. 

I will not go through the Directory, but let any young man 
who desires to be informed of the experience and the beginnings 
of Senators and Representatives read this little book with its 
manv short biographies and he will find in every one of these, 
from the beginning to the end, the very reassuring fact that the 
Representatives of the States and the people of the United 
States in the popular branch of Congress have, as a rule, just 
such stories to tell. While the two Houses of Congress are 
made up of men who came up from the farms and the factories, 
with the accumulated experience and the sympathetic touch of 
all the inten.-ening phases of life, the Government as established 
by our fathers and maintained by those who have preceded us 
will be secure, and the principles upon which it rests will be 
preserved, whether administered by the party of De Armoxd 
following the lines of Jeflersonianism, Democracy, or the party 
of Cushman adhering to the doctrines of Hamilton. 



Address of Mr. Carter, of Montana 109 

What has been said of one of these worthy men may well he 
said of the other. Both were honest. They had the confidence 
of their constituents and maintained that confidence because 
they deser\'ed it. 

It is difiicuit for a man in public life in this country to main- 
tain the confidence of a constituency. Detraction has become 
so common, the desire to destroy reputation and impute evil 
motives so current, that a man must of necessity be cntirely 
worthv of the confidence of a constituency in order long to 
maintain it. 

I knew both these Representatives, and knew them well. In 
private life they were models. In public life they might well 
be emulated. In social life, Mr. President, they were far apart. 

CuSHM.\N will be remembered in the cit\- of Washington 
after manv, manv of us have been forgotten, because of the 
marvelous humor which enabled him to enliven the social gath- 
erings where he was not only welcomed but eagerly sought. I 
think in the quarter of a century through which the great 
Gridiron Club has passed in review a mighty galaxy of gifted 
men, no one is remembered or will be remembered with greater 
enthusiasm and appreciation than the splendid young man, the 
angular, the genial, the straightforward, the honest Repre- 
sentative from the State of Washington — Fr.a.ncis W. Cushm.\n-. 

De Armoxd was cut off in the middle of his career; so, like- 
wise, was CusHMAN. The hand of death reached both these 
men as they were rushing up with rapid strides to the undis- 
cerned summit of a great career. They lived to good purpose, 
and their memories will remain as an inspiration for all time 
to come. 

In their lives, devoted to duty, the nation finds a legacy of 
rare and priceless value. The bereaved homes in Missouri and 
on the distant shores of Puget vSound can find little consolation 



no Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 

in what may be said here, for, after all, a Congress can offer 
little solace to a wounded heart; its expressions at best are 
cold and formal, but the blameless life consecrated to duty 
begets a memory which may in some measure compensate for 
an otherwise irreparable loss. 



Address oj Mr. Chamberlain, of Oregon in 



Address of Mr. Chamberlain, of Oregon 

]\[r. President: It lias been truly said, Mr. President, that 
the " King of Terrors loves a shining mark," and never has this 
saying found stronger confirmation than when the pale mes- 
senger called from our midst Francis W. Cushman. I believe 
there has been no one in public life in recent years who in so 
short a time not only endeared himself to the people, but fixed 
for himself as well a permanent place in his country's history. 
His life is a splendid example of the possibilities under our form 
of government open to every young man who possesses capacity, 
integrity of purpose, courage, and energy. Not only was he in 
many respects like the immortal Lincoln in personal appearance, 
but in his mental processes, in his methods of expression, in 
his power of illustration, in his ability to state a great truth 
and drive it into the conscience and memory of those to whom 
he was addressing himself, his life found a parallel in that of the 
great war President. It may be true that his origin was not 
quite as humble as was that of Lincoln, but he was proud to 
boast that he came from the humbler walks of life, and it was 
by persistency of eflfort, close application to his books, and a 
careful study of the history of his country and of his times 
that he gradually worked himself up to an honored position in 
public life and gained for himself the enduring love of his con- 
stituents and of his countrymen. 

I had neither the pleasure nor the honor of an intimate ac- 
quaintance with him, but the State which he so ably represented 
and where he was so much beloved was but a stone's throw from 
that which I have the honor in part to represent, and as one of 
his neighbors I learned long ago to respect and to admire his 
many excellent qualities of head and heart. The great State 



112 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 

whkh he represented was once a part of the Oregon country, 
and I believe that there is a feeling of attachment between the 
people of these two great Commonwealths that is closer and 
approaches more nearly to the feeling of love which is some- 
times engendered in the breasts of individuals than is to be 
found between any other States in the Union, unless it be 
between the peoples of those other States which, like Wash- 
ington, were carved out of the original territory which consti- 
tuted the Oregon country of the early part of the last century. 

Because of this patriotic attachment the people of Oregon 
took a peculiar interest in Francis W. Cushman and watched 
his phenomenal growth in influence and efficiency as a gifted 
public servant more closely than is ordinarily the case. Then, 
too, in all his public efforts he looked beyond the confines of his 
own State. Whilst he realized that he owed a large debt to his 
immediate constituents, yet, nevertheless, feeling that the inter- 
ests of Oregon were identical with the interests of Washington, 
our people felt at liberty in every emergency to call upon him, 
knowing that their demands would receive the same careful, 
painstaking attention they would receive at the hands of their 
immediate representatives. 

We can not fathom the mysterious ways of Providence, and 
we are sometimes struck with wonderment that death places its 
seal upon the man peculiarly endowed by. nature with all the 
attributes necessary for usefulness in every walk of life and 
passes by the drone in society. It would seem that He who 
notes "the sparrow's fall" would safely keep and preserve 
beneath the protecting shadow of His wing the man of whom 
it mav be writ as of Abou Ben Adhem, "he loved his fellow- 
man," the man who is peculiarly endowed to serve as an exem- 
plar and as a model for those who would sacrifice all for the 
"love of country and of kind." We do not rail at these mys- 
terious dispensations of an all-wise Providence, but whenever 



Address 0/ Mr. Chamberlain, of Oregon 113 

the visitation comes there is ahvavs present the regret that the 
gifted, the pure, the useful, can not be spared and those removed 
who neither by capacity nor by training can ever fit them 
selves for the best uses in life. And so when a man like Fran- 
cis W. CusHMAN, before he had reached the meridian of life 
and while he was just entering upon a career of usefulness, was 
called hence to give an account of the deeds done in the body, 
we could not but wonder that he was selected from amongst 
the thousands who were unfitted to serve "their country or 
their kind." 

A history of his life, written by some one intimatelv ac- 
quainted with it from his boyhood days until his death, would 
be an inspiration to the young men of the country. The slorv 
of his early hardships, telling of the readiness with which he 
grappled and solved the problem of each day, of his devotion 
to duty, of his persistent determination to master whatever was 
given his hand to do, would stimailate all who might have an 
opportunity to read it to loftier aims and ambitions. Such a 
book, if it could in addition unveil the processes of his mind — 
and there are those with whom he was wont to discuss these 
things in the most intimate way — would indeed furnish food 
for deep reflection to those who love to study the mysterious 
movements of the minds. His grasp of things around him, 
whether affecting the more intimate relations of life or the 
community in which he lived, or his country, seemed to be most 
marvelous, and in the consideration of those things which 
tended to the amelioration of the evils which afflict the indi- 
vidual as well as the state, he reasoned intuitively and directly 
to the remedy that ought to be applied for their correction. 
His addresses in the House of Representatives and on [juIjHc 
occasions were models of their kind, and there is no man in 
public life to-day for whom a more brilliant future was projjhe- 

isogas — H. Doc. 995, 61-2 8 



114 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 

sied. In all he said, while there was a vein of occasional humor, 
there was always a splendid and wholesome truth that was " 
destined to remain for all time with those who were fortunate 
enough to hear him. And these remarkable addresses, whilst 
they seemed to have their birth in the impulse of the moment, 
were nevertheless the result of close application, intense study, 
and deep conviction. 

There are distinguished Members of the House and of the 
Senate who have spoken and who wdll speak later with refer- 
ence to the life and public services of the late distinguished 
Representative from Washington who were more intimately 
acquainted with all that concerned him than I, and I feel that I 
would be trespassing upon the time of the Senate to say more. 
I could not, however, let this opportunity pass to say a word 
for the people of Oregon, as well as for myself, in loving remem- 
brance of a man who did not belong to any one State but who 
belonged to our whole country. He will long be remembered 
by the people of the Northwest as one who placed his love of 
country above every other consideration. In his public career 
he stood for all that goes to make for the noblest and highest 
in our system of government. In his death the country has 
lost a splendid public servant, the State a useful and exem- 
plary citizen, and his devoted wife an indulgent and lo\dng 
husband. Of him it might truly be said: 

If everyone for whom he has done some kindly act could liring a blossom 
to his grave, he would sleep to-night beneath a wilderness of flowers. 



Address of Mr. Burkett, oj Nebraska 115 



Address of Mr. Burkett, of Nebraska 

Mr. President: I have listened to the beautiful words of 
tribute that have been spoken of our late lamented friend with 
the keenest personal appreciation. It is gratifying, indeed, 
to know that after a man has served his State and served his 
country he is appreciated, and that that appreciation can be 
expressed as it has been here to-day by those who served 
with him and knew him well. The words of eulogy which have 
been pronounced this afternoon have not only been well said, 
but they have been most fittingly said and equally merited. 
While I have not prepared any remarks in advance upon the 
life of Mr. Cu.Sh.man, nevertheless it seems to me that I would 
be remiss in my duty and neglectful of my obligation to him 
as a friend if I failed to give some expression to mj- apprecia- 
tion of his life and character. 

It was my privilege to know Mr. Cushm.\n during all the 
years that he served as a Member of Congress. He and I came 
here together in December, 1899. While he had formerly been 
a resident of the State of Nebraska, I had had no personal 
acquaintance with him until we came up the Capitol steps on 
the morning of the opening of the Fifty-sixth Congress. To- 
gether we went to the Hall of the House of Representatives, 
took seats near each other, and formed an acquaintance then 
and there which ripened into a friendship and an affection 
which continued until his untimely death. I think it is the 
conmion experience of us all that new Members of the same 
year get better acquainted and perhaps form closer friendships 
than others who come in several years apart. It is the friend- 
ship of boyhood, so to speak, genuine and lasting. Together we 
were mystified and depressed by the strange surroundings of 



ii6 Memorial Addresses: Representative Ctishman 

men and conditions and consinned in the distresses of our own 
insignificance. It was during those early days of our appren- 
ticeship as national legislators when we were comparing notes 
and marking time that I learned to know and appreciate the 
man that Francis W. Cushman was. As has been said so many 
times here this afternoon, and as I have heard it said by 
everyone who has ever spoken in my hearing of Mr. Cushman, 
only those who knew him could appreciate his generous heart, 
his sterling manhood, and his fearless disposition. 

His love went out to every human being, and his sturdiness 
of purpose impressed itself upon' all who came in contact with 
him. There was a ruggedness in his character and a simplicity 
in his manner that attracted to him everyone upon a first 
acciuaintance, and then there was a genuineness of manhood 
about him in ever> thing that he did that held him to you as 
long as you knew him. 

It appealed to all those who came in contact with him that he 
was honest, that he was courageous, and that he was fearless 
in whatever he undertook to do. No man who has come to 
Congress during the dozen years that I have been here and 
have seen men come and go ever won the affection and esteem 
of his colleagues in shorter time nor held it more tenaciously 
than he did. He was most happy in the use of the English 
language, both as a public speaker and in conversation, for 
while his speech scintillated with wit, it neither offended the 
fastidious nor wounded even an adversary. His philosophy was 
of hope and good cheer, and his heart bubbled over with kind- 
ness and generosity even to those who differed with him in opin- 
ion. He recognized the right of every man to think as he would, 
and yet had the strongest faith in his own conclusions. 

As I have listened to what has been said of him this 
afternoon it has seemed to me that his life and the position 
he attained among men is a most successful illustration, first. 



Address 0/ Mr. Biiikett, of Nebraska 117 

of what men can make for themselves if the\' hut utilize the 
opportunities that come to them, and, secondly, the power for 
good there is in men if they will but utilize their faculties 
in that direction. His career was not charted in advance and 
his pathway had not been blazed. What he achieved was 
the result of his own well-directed energy with the facilities 
and opportunities within the reach of every man. 

He did not have anything to push him along, but rather he 
won the race in spite of adversity. He had no fortune and no 
birthright to fame when he started in life. What he did and 
what he achieved was accomplished by his industry and his 
ability to utilize the opportunities that came to him. In my 
judgment, more men fail in life's endeavor from their own 
neglect to utilize the facilities and opportunities that are com- 
mon to all than because of lack of opportunity or lack of ability. 

I have listened to Mr. Cushman speak many times in the 
House of Representatives and elsewhere. His speeches always 
impressed me with the thought, and drove home that truth, of 
how big things, after all, are made up of the little things. He 
never made a speech, as some one has suggested here this after- 
noon, without holding the rapt attention of every hearer. He 
delighted every audience to which he ever spoke. He instructed 
everybody who listened to him. He drove home great truths 
of mighty importance with what he said, and yet his speech 
was made up, in large part, of the commonplace things of life 
that appealed to all men. With simple illustrations from the 
most ordinary experiences of life he illuminated his speech, 
elucidated his subject, and impressed upon the mind of every 
hearer the philosophy of his argument. 

I remember hearing him convulse the House of Representa- 
tives with laughter, delight the galleries of people, and drive 
home a most important truth in the discussion he was making by 
a simple little barnvard scene that he pictured, in which he and 



ii8 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 

his uncle and an old cow were the principal actors. As I now 
recall the incident, he was rebuking those persons who are con- 
tinually criticising certain economic policies of the Government, 
and yet who are prospering under those same policies. He said 
a man was milking his cow in fly time, and every time the cow 
switched her tail the man was cruel enough to give her a kick. 
After the process had gone on for some time and the cruelty 
had been repeated, his uncle suggested to the neighbor that, in 
his opinion, he should either quit kicking the cow or let loose of 
the teat. 

He had a sturdiness of character, as has been so well said 
this afternoon by two or three Senators. However, he was not 
an extremist, although he was most persistent in what he be- 
lieved to be right. But he had another valuable faculty that I 
learned to know very well. He was one of those who could 
work with others, from whom others could take counsel, and 
who could reciprocate by accepting ideas of theirs. During the 
first years of our service in the House of Representatives we 
had before us some of the great legislation in which he and I 
especiallv, being from that western country, were interested. 
He displayed in that time that faculty which, to my mind, is 
most important in a successful legislator, and that is the faculty 
of being able to work wdth other men. He was not intolerant 
of other people's opinions; he was very firm in his own con- 
victions; he was unrelenting for those great principles for 
which he stood; but he was most tolerant, as I have said, of 
the opinions of others. Not only that, but he was able to coop- 
frate with them, to give and take, to the end that something 
practical might be realized. 

I remember during all the time we were confronted with the 
great irrigation problem from a legislative standpoint that 
there were two well-defined theories of how the irrigation propo- 
sition was to be worked out. There Were those who believed 



Address of Mr. Burkeit, of Nebraska 119 

that it must be entirely under the control and supervision of 
the States, while others believed that it must be entirely under 
the supervision and control of the Federal Government. Mr. 
CusHM.\N' had his ideas about that, but he joined with the rest 
of us in working out the proposition as it was finally enacted 
into the law that we are operating under to-day. In so doing 
he displayed, in my judgment, real statesmanship in being able 
to cooperate with others of his fellows so as to bring about 
results. 

The man who comes into public life with notions so firmly 
fixed and methods so well defined that he can not change them 
can never be most successful as a legislator. 

We oftentimes hear it said that legislation itself is a compro- 
mise. It is in a certain sense and must be. No man can serve 
in anv legislative body for any length of time without realizing 
that all legislation must be a compromise. From the foundation 
of this Republic our legislation has been a scries of compro- 
mises. I do not mean compromises in the vulgar sense, not in 
the spirit of trading principle for results, but upon detail. 
I heard once of a lawyer who it was said would rather be 
defeated on a technicality than win on the merits of the case. 
I have seen men in legislative halls who, it seemed to me, would 
rather lose the great principle for which they were contending 
than the form of words in which they wanted to clothe it. 

The Constitution of the United States itself was a compro- 
mise — not of principle perhaps, but certainly of detail. Not a 
single man who was in the convention got that Constitution 
as he wanted it. Not a single section of that Constitution 
to-dav is as it was originally introduced. It represented the 
composite picture of the minds of all the men who helped to frame 
it. There were oftentimes while that convention was sitting 
when it seemed that men would not be able to blend their judg- 



I20 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 

ments and harmonize their differences. The convention was 
threatened with disruption and threatened with adjournment; 
and, in fact, was adjourned for a season because the delegates 
could not harmonize their differences of opinion. Wiser counsel 
prevailed and the result of the deliberations was that great 
document which, in the face of every prediction that was made 
in regard to it at home and abroad, has stood the test for more 
than a century, and seems to have grown stronger and better as 
the years have passed by. 

If I have read to any purpose the history of those times in 
which our Constitution was made, it has been to teach me that 
there was not in that day, as to fundamental doctrines and as 
to fundamental policies for which this Government was to be 
created, any great difference of opinion. It was the wish and 
the purpose of all that this should be a great, free country, where 
every man should have equal opportunities and equal privileges 
before the law and in the sight of God. 

But there was a great difference, as has been suggested by 
the Senator from Montana [Mr. Carter] this afternoon, as to 
the particular methods by which those great truths of liberty 
and equality should be worked out. They differed among them- 
selves as to just how centralized the form of government should 
be, there were differences of opinion as to whether the State 
was to be the unit of representation or whether the individual 
was to constitute that unit in the National Legislature, but 
there never was a difference of opinion as to what this Govern- 
ment, when it was finally formulated, was to stand for and what 
it was to represent in the great galaxy of the nations. 

So when men compromise, they compromise only on details, 
only as to the way the system shall be worked out. They do 
not, except perhaps in extreme and rare cases, compromise on 
fundamental principles and ideals, and when we speak of com- 



Address of Ml. Buikctt. of Nebraska 121 

promise in legislation we mean that we compromise only on 
matters of detail. 

Of course the Constitution did not suit everybody. I do not 
believe, after reading pretty thoroughly the contemporary criti- 
cism of it, that it suited anybody; I am not saying that when 
we enact legislation that it will suit everybody. 

I remember the irrigation bill, of which I have spoken, did 
not suit everybody in this country. In fact, I do not recall of 
hearing anvbody who was interested in its passage but could 
criticise it in some particular, but it has worked out success- 
fully, and perhaps has been better than if the particular plans 
of anv individual or any set of individuals had been followed. 
That does not disturb me very much. I never e.xpect to see 
legislation enacted that will suit everybody. We are a large 
country. We are in every zone large in territory — diversified 
in our industries and cosmopolitan in our population. We rep- 
resent, as has been stated, all nationalities of people. From all 
the nations of the world people have come to America, and 
here in the crucible of stern reality we have developed, as we 
believe, the highest type of civilization the world has ever seen. 
But under the conditions which surround us, with men in Con- 
gress representing agricultural districts, and manufacturing dis- 
tricts, and mining districts, and stock-raising districts, and all 
the different vocations and callings that there are in this 
countrv, and representing as they do all professions and creeds 
and nationalities, it is not surprising that there are great 
differences of opinion, and it is not to be wondered at that 
Congress, with all good intentions, is not able to pass legis- 
lation that will meet the approval of such a cosmopolitan 
constituency. It is because of such conditions that a man 
of Cushman's type and capabilities is so iiseful in the halls of 
Congress. 



122 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 

I have often thought that these facts that I have been reciting 
was a stronger argument and, perhaps, a more lasting argu- 
ment against too great centrahzation of power and authoritv 
and prerogative in the Federal Government than the other 
fact that the power of the Federal Government is limited by the 
terms of the Constitution. We could, under stress of circum- 
stances, change the Constitution; but we never can change the 
fact that it is 3,000 miles from New England to California; that 
we are living in the tropical zone and the temperate zone and 
in the arctic zone; that we are living in agricultural regions and 
in raining districts; that we are dependent in some sections on 
manufactures and in some on agriculture. All that means that 
the less the General Government has to do with reference to 
the local internal affairs of any given community the better 
satisfied that particular locality is liable to be with legislation. 
I am not one of those who would shrink from a single duty of 
the Federal Government, but, on the other hand, I think so 
much of home rule that I would hesitate to reduce the authority 
of the States. I confess that federal incorporation laws, federal 
insurance laws, and federal divorce laws have not appealed to me 
with the same force that they apparently have to some others. 
The less that New York and New England has to do with mak- 
ing laws for us out in Nebraska the better they will suit us, and 
from what I know of their ideas in some particulars I imagine 
the feeling is reciprocated. But in every federal law all the 
States are represented, and the broader the territory covered 
the more difficult it is to satisfy any particular community. 

vSo I say, because our people are so diversified in their indus- 
tries, so different in their interests, and so widely disagree- 
ing in their thinking; because of their difference of nationality, 
and their different environment, and their different political edu- 
cation, we shall never be able to concentrate successfully in one 



Address of Mr. Biirkctt, of Mcbraska 123 

central government the control of local affairs in the different 
communities of this country. 

Mr. President, I have but a word to say further. As has 
been so well said this afternoon, the life of a man like Mr. 
CusHMAN is an inspiration to everybody. He has told me 
something of the struggles and trials that he had to endure 
as a voung man. The life and achievements of a man born 
under those environments, reared under those conditions, 
trained in that school of adversity, if I may use that term, are 
an inspiration, as has been said, to every man in the land, for 
it makes us to realize that here in America imder our flag the 
high position which he attained in the affections of his fellow- 
men and in the history of his country can be attained by a 
man who was born to the more lowly walks of life. 

I mourn his death as the loss of a warm personal friend; I 
mourn his death as the loss of a broad-minded statesman, one 
who was broad enough to appreciate the problems and the ques- 
tions that confront the people in every section of this vast 
domain, and to be a successful and a competent legislator for the 
whole countrv. His vision was broad enough to see 46 States 
of the, Republic and 90,000,000 of people. 

His death was untimely. His life was short in years. It 
seemed sad that he must be called just when life was opening 
up in so large a way, and yet, as I think over it, Mr. Cushm.^n 
lived more than the allotted years in the measure of what he 
accomplished and in what he achieved in the affections and 
hearts of the people who knew him. He will live always in the 
annals of the American Republic, and his name is indelibly 
written in the history of his country. .\nd after all, as I have 
often thought and often said, it is by what men do that they 
are measured, and it is for what they accomplish that they are 
loved and esteemed. 



124 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 

Mr. Cushman played his part as a citizen of this Republic 
heroically and courageously. He performed his work as a 
Representative in Congress with all the diligence and con- 
scientiousness that he would have devoted to his own personal 
affairs. 

He was a good man and a good citizen. He did his duty as 
he saw it in the sight of God, and defied, if necessarv, the criti- 
cisms of man. 



Address of Mr. Burton, of Ohio 12; 



Address of Mr. Burton, of Orao 

Mr. President: -I am prompted to utter some words in 
eulogy upon Mr. Cush.m.w, not only because he was a personal 
friend, but more because for strength of character and marked 
individuality he deserves to stand in the very forefront among 
the men whom I have known. Happy is that man of such type 
that his life affords a permanent lesson and inspiration to others. 
Of such a type was Mr. Cushm.^.n'. 

I have been stronglv impressed by the similarity of his 
character to that of the great martyr, Abraham Lincoln. 
Those who knew them both say they were strikingly alike in 
figure. Thev were also alike in that each was possessed of a 
genial humor, a marked development of the logical faculty, and 
felicitv of illustration. Then, too, each alike had his strain of 
melancholv, so often conjoined with a sense of humor. In 
addition, Mr. Cushm.-^n suffered from ill health, but he did not 
on account of that ^llow himself to dwell in any caves of gloom 
or lead a life of hesitation or inanition. Too many men who 
suffer from indisposition or ill liealth are like stranded hulks. 
The tides of life go bv, leaving them unmoved and without 
participation in the events of the time. 

It was not so with Mr. Cushm.an. If he at any time suffered, 
he bore it with fortitude, and endeavored to derive from it in a 
measure a certain spur for his work, utilizing for his benefit that 
which is so often a destructive enemy to others. 

Among the circumstances which made of him a really great 
man and one worthy to rank as a statesman, I think should be 
mentioned first his poverty. He did not suffer that poverty 
which is associated with squalor or hunger, but his life and 
that of his parents was one of lowliness in which every day 



126 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 

must have its burdens to be met, a life in which existence was 
in a measure a struggle. But no doubt he gained injunctions 
at his father's and mother's knee of far more value than would 
have been granted him by the possession of broad acres or the 
ownership of large amounts of securities. 

It is clear that in this country of ours competition is so sharp 
that in certain important branches of endeavor none except 
those who have the discipline, the impulse to labor, and that 
spur to ambition which attaches to poverty, can succeed. 

In the great legal profession there may be now and then the 
fortunate son of wealthy parents, but the richest rewards of 
labor belong to those who from their childhood have been 
inured to constant toil and to hardships. 

This new world of ours is one in which those who hope to 
succeed must be up and doing. There is no more valuable 
possession or valuable inheritance than that which comes from 
beginnings among the poor and the lowly. This training of 
Cushman's also gave him a sympathy with humanity and led 
him to look upon the people about him as all alike, created by 
the same God. It caused him to considei- man as man irre- 
spective of wealth, of rank, and of station, and gave him thus 
the spirit of true democracy. 

It gave him also, I may say, a higher patriotism. For what 
does this framework of government of ours exist except for the 
maintenance of equality, for the holding of the protecting 
shield over the weak and the wronged? It is not enough that 
order should be preserved, that property rights should be pro- 
tected, but in this great Republic of ours there must be oppor- 
tunity for all; and in appreciating that fact, Mr. Cushman, 
because of his early days, had an education more valuable than 
the training of any college or university. 

Next I would call attention to his association with varied 
types of people — with the section men on the railroad, with the 



Address of Mr: Burton, of Ohio 127 

cowbovs on the plains, with workmen in the lumber camp. 
Then he had experience as a school-teacher, which affords a 
great discipline in the knowledge of human nature. All this 
made of him a man whom some would describe as many-sided, 
but at anv rate, it gave him a ready judgment of men, a per- 
ception of the feelings and aspirations of all the people with 
whom he associated. In this regard he had an education 
somewhat akin — I make the comparison again — to that which 
Lincoln possessed. 

Then, too, he lived on the track of the pioneers. He was born 
in Iowa, later was in Wyoming, passing then to Nebraska, and 
then migrating to the Pacific coast. There is a strength, a 
prowess, in the pioneer which is typical of our advancing civiliza- 
tion; not that I would praise restlessness, but the spirit of adven- 
ture, the desire to found new States and communities, is one of 
the strongest features in our American life. 

If ever the time comes, as I trust it may, when the war drum 
shall beat no more, there will still exist the army of the pioneers, 
"an armv never disbanding, always advancing, made up of the 
strong and the fearless, the progressive and adventurous, shrink- 
ing from no obstacle, seeking alike the fairest spots on the earth's 
surface and the barren sides of the mountain; builders of States • 
and makers of nations; they march everywhere with steady 
tread, over mountain and valley, carrying no flags of conquest, 
but transforming the wilderness and the desert; they are the 
tvpical Americans, always building better than tfiey knew, and 
building more than they knew." 

In this great movement of the pioneers he had a part. He 
associated with them, with those who had been new settlers, and 
was himself, I may say, a partaker in these enterprises for the 
settlement of new States. 

Perhaps the most prominent part he had in legislation was 
for our new possessions in Alaska. Indeed, one man has said 



128 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 

that Benjamin Harrison and Francis \V. Cushmax have framed 
the laws for Alaska. 

He was also alert for his own State, and at the same time 
never allowed himself to be led aside from the general interest of 
the country into a desire to promote a mere section or part. It 
is true on one occasion he was quite strenuous in asserting that 
the State of Washington had not received proper recognition in 
certain legislation that was pending in Congress, but that was 
rather because of a sense of fairness and responsibility, I take it, 
than from any disposition to be regarded as a mere representative 
of a locality. 

Mr. President, the career of a legislator here is more or less 
discouraging, sometimes disheartening, and the question arises, 
What is the monument left by Francis W. Cushman; what re- 
minder will there be of his work? It sometimes seems that our 
labor here is characterized by hope without realization, labor 
without accomplishment, and devotion to duty without reward. 
More or less, the work of every man, however eminent he may 
be, is ephemeral. Statutes are written that were drawn by 
him, but they disappear in the great mass of the statutory law. 
The statute may be known by the name of some individual, 
but, nevertheless, that individual receives scant credit for his 
accomplishments. 

I take it the monument of Mr. Cush.max will be in his ten 
years' service here for the country, in the lesson of his life. 
Some mav forget his eloquent words — and they were eloquent — 
but he was one who, in a time of great progress, labored hard for 
his State and for his country. Possibly the time will come 
when we speak of the changing front of the world, when the 
Pacific coast shall assume an importance far and away beyond 
that of the Atlantic; probably it is safe to say that the time will 
come when the State of Washington will within its borders con- 
tain a population exceeding even that of the proud Empire State, 



Address of Mr. Burton, of Ohio 129 

for its future no one can measure. In all this progress the people 
of Washington, the people of the country, whether Cushman 
has a monument or not in stone or bronze, will look to him 
as one who, with patriotism, with industry, with an accurate- 
grasp of the future, and, more than all, with a gentle heart, 
labored hard for his Commonwealth and for his country. 

S0945 — H. Doc. 995, 61-2 9 



130 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 



Address of Mr. Hughes, of Colorado 

Mr. President: Two incidents in the life of Mr. Cushm.w, 
one of which first invited my attention to his quaUties as man 
and orator, and the last a notable exhibition of the position 
he had won in public life, I think present the most dramatic 
contrast of the possibilities in American life which in the career 
of one individual I have observed. 

Some vears ago, in the city of Omaha, my attention was 
drawn to the fact that Mr. Cushm.'\n, whom I had met on the 
western border of Nebraska, had been subjected to a cruel accu- 
sation and a most unjust incarceration; and that at last, when 
nothing could be found to warrant either, he had been dis- 
charged and then permitted in court to speak in his own behalf. 
My informant was a trained lawyer who had won distinction 
and renown in his profession, and with him was one who graced 
this Chamber. He spoke of the speech of Cushman as the 
most remarkable utterance, under all the circumstances, he 
had ever heard. In that early utterance, delivered after such 
an ordeal, we find all the characteristics of the life and accom- 
plishments of Mr. CusHM.\N. 

I recall a few words from that speech as displaying the ster- 
ling character, the intrepid courage, the eloquence, the genius 
of the man, which brought him a success forever effacing the 
slightest possibility of a taint upon his honor and his fame as a 
result of the injustice, the wicked injustice, which official care- 
lessness or malice had infilicted upon him. He said : 

I am not now speaking to secure my release. That has already been 
accorded me. I do not linger here to make a defense which is necessary, 
but simply a statement of the facts regarding the outrage of which I have 
been the victim. 



Address of Mr. Hughes, of Colorado 131 

First, I demand that my vindication in this matter be as public as my 
accusation. My arrest was heralded from the house tops and will travel 
to the uttermost confines of the State, where the whisper of my release 
will never go. The news of my arrest has flown back to my friends that 
I have left, and suspicion has fallen on me like a dark and blackened cloud. 
The distorted rumor of this thing will precede me in my journey like a 
filthy odor wafted on the wings of the summer wind. Here in this court 
room with all possible publicity was I charged with this crime, and here 
in the same place I demand my vindication. 

And again he said: 

That I would commit any crime is preposterous, but I would rather 
die than sin against this Government. If there is one spot in my heart 
that is more tender than another, one impulse of my soul that thrills 
quicker than all others, it is my love for this Government. This Govern- 
ment my ancestors helped to found: they helped to preserve it from de- 
struction after it was founded; and its purity and perpetuity are a part 
of my life. 

And, in concluding, he said: 

Had I been guilty, my own kin, regardless of their bond, would have 
counseled me to flee, for even with that foul load of dishonor upon me, 
the remnant of their love would have clung to me wherever I fled in crimi- 
nal exile. Let no man accuse me of vaunting the virtues of my own family 
when I say that tender solicitude and open-handed generosity toward 
one another are unfailing attributes of the whole race. By them filthy 
coin is never weighed in the same scale by which our joint happiness is 
measured. Never a misfortune weighed down one which the outpouring 
of the little all of the remainder would avert. Then, does any sane man 
say that when only restrained by the pitiful and pusillanimous $500 I 
would have remained to meet this charge, of which, if proven guilty, the 
punishment is imprisonment for half a lifetime? No man who knows how 
I love liberty and despise wealth will believe that. 

.■\nd now that I am dismissed, it is wondered why I linger here to make 
this explanation. Yes; after 1 have been causelessly arrested and de- 
tained for twenty-three days I am now dismissed with a blot upon my 
name and a stain upon my reputation. I can now go and rebuild what 
some one else has torn down. I can now commence to repair what has 
cost me the labor of my little lifetime to build up and what some one else 



132 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 

has wantonly destroyed in a single hour. But I am dismissed ! What 
an unreasonable fellow I must be to object after I have been dismissed! 
I am not here, if you please, hunting for a dismissal, but demanding a vin- 
dication. A mere dismissal might afford a sufficient hole for a guilty 
whelp to crawl out of, but it is no doorway for an innocent man to walk 
through. That dismissal is, of course, payment in full for all that I have 
suffered in mind and body, and I presume it is a full legal tender for the 
tears of my mother when she read the account of this filthy thing, and I 
was imprisoned and not allowed to send her a little message and tell her 
it was all a false and damnable lie ! 

This was the doctrine of the cowboy of the Plains, of the 
humble school-teacher in the country district, of the humblest 
of laborers upon the railroad line, when his heart was aroused 
by an injustice and he sought to vindicate the name which he 
loved and honored. 

No doubt it was a dark hour in the life of Francis Cushman 
as he turned his face still to the west and sought out his new 
home in Washington, knowing, as he said, that as a precursor 
of his coming would be a herald of this foul and unfounded 
accusation. And yet in the brief period of a short political 
life the people in this new home came to know him and to 
honor him. 

The last time that I had an opportunity to meet him and 
speak with him was during the extraordinary session of Con- 
gress, and toward the close of the debate upon the tariff in the 
House. I was there listening to the discussion which had 
attracted the attention, not merely of this great Republic, but of 
the entire world. A whisper went about that Cushman was 
going to speak, and when he rose there fell a hush upon that 
assembly which had almost been turbulent but a moment be- 
fore, and he delivered one of those rare, charming, attractive 
utterances which had come to be deemed characteristic of him. 
1 thought of these two pictures in his life, the lonely cowboy, 
fresh from the insult of the vile durance to which he had been 



Address of Mr. Hughes, of Colorado 133 

subjected, speaking before a great court in the language of 
indignant vindication of his own honor in words that stir and 
thrill us now, and the tribute paid to his worth, to his character, 
to his ability by the great assemblage of the Representatives of 
the American people. 

I have thought since, Mr. President, as I think now, that in 
these two chapters in the life of Mr. Cushman we have the 
greatest imaginable demonstration of the opportunities which 
this country presents to ability and of the justice which in the 
end it meets out to its public men. 

So great was his talent, so indomitable his courage, that no 
disappointment, no humiliation could long restrain him. He 
went out into the great and growing West, of which he was soon 
a tvpifving part; he grew with it; he became thoroughly identi- 
fied with it; and he came here to the Capitol to represent and 
speak in single-hearted devotion in its Ijehalf. How well he 
performed his dutv to it, how fully he earned the honors it 
gave him, it is needless for me to recall. All those who associ- 
ated with him in the House of Representatives, all those who 
were called upon in the discharge of public duty to meet him, 
to read his utterances, learned that he was a great American 
Representative. He spoke for the young but mighty West, the 
West which so often in these Halls has been represented by the 
strong men of the country; for there has never been an hour 
in the growth of this Nation, as westward we have pushed the 
fringe of our settlement and civilization, when the characters 
of strength and patriotism of whom we have boasted proudly 
have not come frequently and abundantly out of the new land. 

In the days when Tennessee was a new settlement there 
came Jackson and White to this Chamber, and other kindred 
spirits followed. So from Illinois we had a Douglas and a 
Lincoln in the infancy of that State. When Michigan was yet 



134 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 

in the swaddling clothes of statehood Lewis Cass came here to 
represent and speak in her behalf and to splendidly ser\-e all 
the people; and so from Indiana and Ohio came, early in their 
history, statesmen of power and force. Then when you cross 
what for years was the western line of our settlements and come 
to mv natiye State, the hour of its birth as a State witnessed 
the advent into this body of Thomas Benton, who for thirty 
years was a prominent figure in its debates, and who, as the 
great and sturdy defender and representative of the West, 
fought its battles always and won its victories until it obtained 
the opportunities which its resources demanded. 

Who will question the beneficent course of western growth? 
Who will question the high character of its development? I 
sometimes wonder, when I read or hear disparaging remarks of 
the West and obsen.-e a sort of effort to create the impression 
that there is something uncouth and uncultured in it, why 
those who utter such expressions do not recall that we are 
their sons and their brothers, with just a little stronger touch 
of the wanderlust in our blood, a little more of the courage for 
and love of adventure in our hearts, and a little more of the 
old-time spirit that opened up the wilderness and extended the 
borders of this Republic from ocean to ocean, than have they 
who are happy and contented about the homestead hearth 
which they are content to enjoy. 

I trust the day will come w^hen a more perfect knowledge of 
the great West shall be so complete that the line of unjust dis- 
crimination will no longer be drawn. Whether that hour comes 
willingly or unwillingly, it is coming, and coming fast. Its delay 
can not be long secured, and when it comes it will be remem- 
bered that iust such qualities, just such endowments, and just 
such hearts as made up the sum total of the splendid character 
presented by Mr. CrsHM.\N are truly typical of the West. 



Address of Mr. Hughes, of Colorado 135 

The people of that teeming and growing land love the 
Republic; they are ready to defend it, to battle for it. They 
wish justice for themselves, and no more eloquent tongue 
than Francis Cushman's has pleaded more powerfully and 
persistently the cause of that justice here and elsewhere. I 
trust that a tribute to his appeals will come in the recognition of 
that for which he battled. He has reared his own monument. 

It has been said that in his youth he bore the curse of po\ert\-. 
It has been responded here to-day, and how truthfully, that 
poverty is never a curse to youth; it is often its richest blessing. 
I have often thought that the happiest combination which 
could come would be that the fathers and mothers might all be 
wealthy and have the comforts which are so gratifying in their 
old davs which wealth brings, and that all the boys should he 
poor until they had fought their own battles, won their own 
successes, and achieved their own independence. 

I trust that some of these modern inventors of new things 
mav find a way to legislate so that this happy combination may 
be accomplished. I think it would delight us all to know that 
while thev will not be bound down too long by some of the 
things we had to endure ourselves and which were irksome 
when endured, but are a happy memory now when we have 
lived through them, they might be tested, developed, made 
strong and self-reliant by them. 

Mr. President, I did not agree in political thought with Mr. 
CusHMAN. On the day of this last meeting with him, to which 
I have referred, I walked from the House to this Chamber with 
him and spoke of his speech. I said then, and I can repeat the 
utterance now with sincerity, "I heard every word of it, was 
charmed by its eloquence, its sarcasm, its homely and apt illus- 
tration, the patriotism which ran like a golden thread through 
it all; but," I said to Mr. Cushman, "I do not agree with your 



136 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 

political economy, I am absolutely opposed to your political 
philosophy, but yet I think you made one of the finest speeches 
I have ever heard." 

I rejoice, Mr. President, to know that the friendships of this 
life know no partv lines; that we can recognize these charming 
companionships which sweeten life and make it endurable, 
though they break down and pass over the artificial distinctions 
and separations which we have erected in creating parties 
themselves. It was with this idea that I came to esteem and 
to find pleasure in the success and in the victories which were 
won by Mr. Cushman, and to whom there were many yet coming, 
in all the probabilities of human life, when his untimely death 
brought loss to the Nation and sorrow to all his friends. 



Address oj Mr. Jones, of Washington 137 



Address of Mr. Jones, of WAsmNGTON 

]\Ir. President: I come not on this occasion to philosophize 
upon the nivsteries of Hfe and death nor to speculate upon the 
hereafter. Nor shall I especially eulogize the public life and 
character of him whose death we mourn. That has been done 
in words more eloquent than I can utter in the House of Repre- 
sentatives, of which he was so long a useful and honored Member 
and bv those who have preceded me. 

I come to pay the tribute of my heart to him who was my 
close friend through ten years of common public service, and 
whose relationship was almost that of brother to brother. 
Words are as "sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal" when we 
attempt through them to portray the emotions of the human 
heart regarding those we love. And so it is that, on occasions 
of this kind, our love is more eloquently expressed by silence. 
The heart can feel what the lips can not utter. 

Fr.wcis \V. Cushm.^n was my friend. We entered public 
life together and so continued to the end. In 1898 we were 
both nominated at large for Representatives in Congress on the 
Republican ticket. The contest seemed almost hopeless. In 
1896 the State had gone overwhelmingly for the Democratic 
ticket. Our opponents were the Hon. James Hamilton Lewis 
and the Hon. William C. Jones, Members of Congress, able, elo- 
quent, and strong with the people. But few Republicans hoped 
for success. :\Ir. Cushman himself looked only for defeat. I 
well remember receiving a letter from him two or three weeks 
before the close of the campaign, in answer to one of mine in 
which I had expressed a belief in our success, in which he said : 
"Jones, I admire your nerve, but I have little confidence in 
vour judgment. We will be defeated by about fifteen hundred." 



138 Memorial Addresses: Representative Ctishman 

We were elected by nearly four thousand majority, and, on 
the 4th of ]\Iarch, 1899, the ambition of his life was realized; 
he had become a l\Iember of the House of Representatives, in 
his estimation the greatest legislative body on earth. He often 
expressed his pride in being permitted to represent his beloved 
State in this branch of "his country's Congress." 

For ten vears he was chosen at large by increased majorities 
to represent his State, being nominated each time by acclama- 
tion, and at the time of his death he was serving his sixth term 
as a Representative from the second district. Well and faith- 
fully did he discharge his trust, reflecting credit upon his people 
and securing fame and renown for himself. As a wit and an 
orator his reputation was nation-wide. On the hustings, at the 
banquet board, and in the House he pleased, entertained, and 
instructed, and engaged in flights of eloquence seldom surpassed. 
His work was not for himself, not for honor, although he was 
extremely proud of the honors conferred upon him, but for the 
people who trusted him. He knew their needs, wants, and 
desires. The humblest could come to him just as freely as the 
highest. In fact, he would give them more attention, because 
he felt they needed him more. 

Mr. CusHM.«iN and I served together, representing the same 
constituency, ten years. He, Mr. Humphrey, and I served to- 
gether six years, and during our entire service we worked to- 
gether for our people as one man. During that entire period 
not a single unpleasant incident marred our relations and no 
difference of opinion or action occurred upon any important 
matter; and he contributed his full share to this harmonious 
relationship. 

He was a most lovable character. In friendships he was as 
true as steel. His friends were legion and everyone had a kind 
word, and was not afraid to express it, for "dear old Cush." 



Address of Mr. Jones, of [Vashington 139 

No man could charge him with ingratitude. He was always 
trying to do for those who had done for him and often expressed 
his regret that he could do so little to show his gratitude for 
the favors he had received. He was as tender and sympathetic 
as a child and on account of this w-as often imposed upon. This 
caused him no regret, however, because he had had the pleasure 
that comes from the performance of a good deed. 

He was absolutely honest. He wronged no man; he betrayed 
no trust. His public life gave the lie to that vile slander, too 
generally believed by the thoughtless, that the honest and incor- 
ruptible legislator is the exception and not the rule. He was 
absolutely honest in thought and deed as a man and as a legisla- 
tor. Nor was he the exception in this. It should be known of 
all men, and should be a source of pride to everyone, that not 
only Members of Congress, but officials in high position, are 
almost without exception men of unimpeachable integrity and 
honesty, both in public and private life, in deed and purpose; 
and those who would lead the people to believe otherwise are 
the worst enemies the Republic can have. We are too prone 
to impeach the character and question the motives of those 
who differ from us in opinion and, in so doing, we not only 
injure them, but we undermine the confidence of the people in 
our Government and its institutions. It is to be regretted that 
there is a great tendency to-day to ascribe the most sinister mo- 
tives to men of the highest character and whose lives and abil- 
itv have done much to make our country great and glorious 
simply because they do not agree with our opinions or lend their 
support to measures in which we believe. Differing with us, 
they are corrupt and the enemies of the people. Agreeing with 
us, they would be the benefactors of humanity and patriots. 

I hope the day soon will come when men's motives will not 
be questioned or their characters attacked simply because they 



140 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 

do not agree with us as to what policies shall be pursued or 
what steps shall be taken to accomplish a common and much- 
desired purpose. Our public men are honest. They are devoted 
to the interests of the people. They are not the champions of 
"special interests." They are all patriotic. 

Mr. CusH.MAN was a man of intense convictions, but he never 
failed to credit honest motives and loyal purposes to those who 
differed from him. He was tenacious of his own views, but 
most tolerant of others. 

He was a brilliant man. He had a power of expression 
scarcely surpassed. Although possessed of great natural ability 
and seemingly instinctively gifted with a most peculiar power 
of striking expression, his great success was really due to hard 
work and careful preparation. He did not engage often in 
general discussion. His speeches were the result of long prepa- 
ration. He often expressed to me his regret that he did not 
feel prepared to engage more frequently in the general discus- 
sion of measures of general legislation. Had he lived, however, 
I believe he soon would have shown his ability in general dis- 
cussion, because he was storing his mind with the knowledge 
and facts that are so essential for this kind of debate. 

In the use of sarcasm and invective he was a master, and he 
was an exception among those who use these keen, incisive 
weapons of the pubUc speaker in that he left no wound or 
sting in the individual against whom they were aimed. As a 
rule he used these weapons against principles and ideas and 
not against the individual, and he was so earnest and honest 
in what he said and did that his opponents never felt that they 
were the ones at whom his aim was directed. His very earnest- 
ness took from his darts their sting without destroying their 
effectiveness. 

He was from the people and continued one of them. Before 
his election to Congress he was "Frank" or "Cush," and to 



Address of Mr. Jones, of ]]'ashington 141 

the close of his Ufe he was " Fraxk" or "Old Cish." The hum- 
blest of his constituents was just as dear to him as the most 
powerful. In fact, the jjoorcr and more helpless those who 
sought his aid, the more considerate and earnest was he in 
their behalf and the more of his personal attention would 
he give to their needs and requests. He was indeed the servant 
of all the people, regardless of their station or condition. 

He loved his gun and his rod. His jo\- in handling or owning a 
new gun or fishing rod was that of a child, and it was a delight 
to see and hear him express his pleasure. He loved to fish, and 
from one year to the next he looked forward to a fishing trip 
he was wont to take with two or three dear friends over in 
Mason County along its beautiful mountain streams. He was 
intense in his fishing, as in everything else. He did his share 
of the packing and cooking and was the life of the camp with 
his stories and quaint sayings. He saw the beauty in the for- 
ests, the grandeur in the lofty mountains, and he heard the 
music of the rippling waters and the thunderous cascades. His 
soul heard the "cry of the wild" and hearkened to it, and to-day 
none so love and cherish his memory as those boon companions 
who shared with him the burdens of the camp, the pleasures of 
the forest, mountain, and stream, and whose lives were made 
happier bv his entrancing stories and unaffected simplicity. 

He was a brave man. He was honest and sincere in his opin- 
ions and courageous in expressing them. He was pleased to be 
in accord with his fellows, but he did not fear to oppose their 
wishes and desires when contrary to his matured judgment, and 
no threat or intimation of retaliation, political or otherwise, 
could swerve him from his purpose. He cared as much for 
popular approval as any man, but no man would deviate less 
from his conception of the right to gain it than he. 

The life of Francis W. Cushman should be an inspiration to 
everv honest, ambitious boy in the land. Success docs not 



142 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 

depend upon accident, birth, or wealth, but largely upon our own 
efforts and our own willingness to make use of our talents and 
the opportunities that present themselves to us. His life proves 
that political success docs not depend upon wealth or dishonesty. 
He was nominated for Congress in the first instance largely 
because in prior campaigns he had not only demonstrated his 
ability but because he had shown his willingness to give his 
time and talents in support of the principles in which he believed 
and to go wherever and whenever he was needed. He went 
to the little country schoolhouse just as cheerfully as to the 
large city hall, and when a strong man was needed to lead 
a forlorn hope his party naturally turned to him. He was a 
poor man. He had no money to spend to influence votes. He 
simply went to the people; talked to them, met as many as 
possible, and left his cause in their hands. This same course he 
followed during all of his career. Not one dollar did Francis 
W. Cushman spend improperly to secure at any time either his 
nomination or election. What higher political tribute could be 
paid to him or to the people whom he so ably and honorably 
represented ? No young man need be discouraged from seeking 
an honorable position in which to serve the people and his coun- 
try because he has not money, carping pessimists to the contrary 
notwithstanding. Not only is this true in the State of Wash- 
ington, but I want to believe it true of the entire country. 
Worth, honesty, integrity, industry, and faithfulness will com- 
mand success anywhere in this grand Republic, either in private 
or public endeavor. 

Mr. Cushman was an intense partisan. He believed in the 
principles of his party, not because they were the principles 
of his party, but because he believed they were for the best 
interests of his country. His party faith was a part of his patri- 
otism. On this theory he was a firm believer in a protective 



Address of Mr. Jones, of Washington 143 

tariff. He did not believe in it for the sake of so-called special 
interests. He knew no "special interests." He did know that 
you can not injure one business in the country without injuring 
all. He did know that if you strike at the strong in our indus- 
trial life, the weak are the first to suffer from the blow. He 
was a protectionist "without stuttering." 

In the protective tariff he saw prosperity for his country; 
in it he saw employment for the laborer at good wages, and a 
happy home and family; a good market for the farmer's prod- 
uce, and farms without mortgages, and the farmer's wife and 
children happy, prosperous, and contented; the merchant a 
steady custom and a good bank account. In it he saw pros- 
perous banks, filled with the money of every class of our citi- 
zenship; railroads built in every direction, to carry the prod- 
ucts of the farm and factory to market. In it he saw factories 
running day and night to supply the needs of a prosperous 
people. In it he saw a principle that, in his judgment, was 
for the prosperity and happiness of every man, woman, and 
child in the Republic. He believed in it as a principle appli- 
cable not in spots, but to the entire country and to every in- 
dustry, and he had no patience with that theory of protection 
that would protect one section and its products and then strive 
to deny it to another section and its products. In the debate 
on the present tariff law he expressed his position in this plain 
language : 

I am a consistent protectionist. My protectionism rises superior to 
my selfishness. I am willing to protect the barley of Minnesota, and 
I ask similar protection for the lumber of my own State. I am consistent. 

And I say that the man on this floor who wants to protect his ovvn 
little industry but is willing to see his neighbor's industry destroyed is 
not a protectionist; he is just a plain political cannibal, willing to have 
his neighbor eaten up if he can be saved. 

Here is the eminent gentleman from Minnesota, who proclaims his 
Republicanism in the very moment when he is deserting the principles 



144 Memoiial Addresses: Representative Cttshman 

of that party. Sir, I am here to impugn the Republicanism of any man 
who wants a tariff of nearly a dollar a grain on barley and who does not 
want a tariff of a cent per thousand on lumber. 

Sir, my political faith is a matter of conviction and not of convenience. 
I do not change my politics when I change my residence. 

Almost a quarter of a century ago I lived in Nebraska. It was a great 
prairie State, with little or no forests. But I believed in a tariff on lumber 
then just the same as I do now. 

If I moved away from the State of Washington, which is a great lumber 
State, and went back to Nebraska, I would carry my convictions back 
with me, even if I had no visible assets. 

But some men cry out: "Oh, it is not going to hurt the lumber busi- 
ness to remove the tariff " Sir, those men give the lie to their language 
by showing the tenacity with which they cling to protection for each 
little product of their own. 

My friends, this is a matter that comes close home to me. I have never 
appealed on this floor for any privilege or protection which I was not 
willing to concede to all other people and all other sections. In relation 
to this whole tariff bill I have stood openly and aboveboard for a fair 
measure of protection to every legitimate American industry And hav- 
ing been that fair and generous to others, I do not want the one great 
industry which means more for the prosperity and happiness of my people 
made a vicarious sacrifice to gratify the selfishness of any man. 

His last great effort in behalf of his people was to protect 
their industries from the assaults of those who, while insisting 
upon protection for their own products, would deny it to those 
of his people, and his last great speech was in defense of his 
people and their industries and in favor of the fair and equal 
application of the principle in which he so strongly believed. 
He stated clearly in this speech the principles that governed 
his public action and political career, principles which should 
govern everv man trusted and honored by his people. He said : 

I will say to you all, in conclusion, that the matters upon which I have 
spoken to-day — both lumber and coal — are industries that are very close 
to my heart. 



Address of Mr. Jones, of Washington 145 

We have 1 10,000 people in my State of Washington who work as labor 
ers in the sawmill industry Counting four members to the family, that 
makes 440,000 mouths that are fed by this industry in my State alone — 
practically a half a million people. This is not a trifling matter that I 
have been discussing. 

We do not ask anything that is unfair. We ask only the same measure 
of protection for our industry that the Republican party accords to other 
people and other industries. 

I realize that my side of this question is the unpopular side, but as 
God is my witness, I know it is the right side. Is has been my duty to 
present these matters to you as best I could. I ask gentlemen not to be 
swept away from what is right by a temporary tide of popularity. 

Unfortunately, as it seems to me, there are some men in public life 
during these days who are more anxious to find out what is popular than 
thev are to determine what is right. 

I have known men in my lifetime who made themselves hump-shouldered 
and wrynecked keeping one ear to the ground hstening for the rumble 
of popular approval, but who never raised their eyes toward heaven search- 
ing for the signals of the truth. 

Mr. Chairman, speaking for myself, I have certain fixed political beliefs 
and convictions. They may not be the wisest, but such as they are I 
entertain them honestlv. I am so constituted morally that I can not 
put these convictions on a wheelbarrow and trundle them around after 
any political acrobat, however exalted his position or pleasing his person- 
ality. One of the convictions I have cherished since my young manhood 
is my unshaken belief in and my unwavering adherence to the policy of 
protection to American industries, and where the pathway of my youth 
led there the feet of my manhood are still marching. And the history of 
this Nation throughout all the years that lie between amply vindicates my 
judgment- 

And if, perchance, some people in this Nation to-day may be wavering 
in their allegiance to that splendid principle, that constitutes no reason 
for me to change — that is all the more reason why those of us who have 
the courage of our convictions should stand by our principles. 

Political death has no terrors for me when it looms athwart the path 
of duty He who has the faith to march to political death for an immortal 
principle is sustained and soothed by an approving conscience, and he 

50945 — H. Doc. 995. 61-2 10 






146 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushman 

sees in the sun as it goes down the blessed reflection of a coming dawn that 
shall be the signal of his political resurrection. But the political infidel 
who has no economic convictions, save the changing murmur of the mul- 
titude, when political death overtakes him his miserable image passes 
forever into the changeless night, uncomforted by the companionship of 
heroic recollections of the blessed hope of a future day. 

Sir, in the political life of America those who have eternally chased 
shifting public opinion at the sacrifice of principle are not those who have 
eventually planted their feet upon the serene and lofty summit The 
men who are willing to accept defeat for principle rather than to capitulate 
for the spoils of office are the men whose treasured memories to-day con- 
stitute the noblest heritage of this Republic. 

These words show his fairness, his earnestness, his sincerity, 
his courage, and his political honesty far better than could any 
words of mine. 

I said he was a partisan. His party fealty was shown in the 
passage of the present tariff law. When it was ready to be 
voted upon it was not satisfactory to him, not because it was 
not low enough, but because he felt that the products of his 
State were not accorded that protection which they were 
entitled to under a really just application of the doctrine of 
protection, but, knowing that all important legislation is the 
result of compromise, willing to yield his individual judgment 
to the judgment of the great majority of his jDarty, and willing 
to accede to a partial sacrifice of his own interests for what 
was deemed the public good, he joined with that majority in 
passing the measure, after voicing most strongly his protest 
and stating the broad, patriotic ground upon which he gave his 
assent. In doing so he thus stated his views: 

Mr. Speaker, I trust that every man in this House will understand that 
I realize full well the meaning of this resolution and the effect it is likely 
to have, if adopted, upon the mighty lumber and coal interests of ray 
home district. But, Mr. Speaker, in my mind, above and beyond the 

local interests of my own district there rises the welfare of the entire 



Address of Mr. Jones, of Washington 147 

90,000,000 jieople in this N'atinn. Therefore, let me pass by for a moment 
my own personal interest and speak of the welfare of the Nation at large. 

I do not claim to be wiser or more patriotic than my political breth- 
ren on this Hoor, but 1. for one, want to see this tariff bill passed, and 
passed soon, whether it exactly suits nie nr not. It ill becomes any man 
to set up his own little interest against the great and overpowering wel- 
fare of this Nation at large. Speaking for myself alone, I thank God that 
my Republicanism is a little deeper than my selfishness. 

I do not know that he professed any special religiotis belief. 
I do know he would not intentionally wrong anyone. He was 
always ready to assist the poor, the needy, the suffering, and 
the helpless. He was ever ready to condemn the wrong and 
to uphold the right; and this is a pretty good creed to live by 
and, I believe, to die by. The only expression I know of from 
his lips as to the future was uttered in a tribute to a dear friend 
of his who had passed to the beyond, and it applies most strik- 
ingly to himself and his life. He said: 

His daily life constituted the essence <if religion — that practical and 
enduring religion that manifested itself rather in good deeds done for 
others than in selfish prayers voiced for himself. .\uA those are the funda- 
mental qualities in man, without which neither church nor state can 
endure. 

The hope that I chiefly cherish as to the hereafter is that some time, 
some place, somewhere beyond the darkness of the grave, I may meet 
again, in substance or in Shadow, the choice and master spirits I have known, 
of whom he was one. As to what lies beyond the grave, I do not know. 
Poor mortals that we are, we peer into the im])enetrable shadows that lie 
beyond the tomb. We only hope; we do not know. But if there be an 
existence after death, a realm beyond the stars where the good, the brave, 
and the true meet their just reward, then we, his friends, know that, 
unvexed by pain and unshadowed by care, our friend is resting to-day in 
that "island valley of Avalon, where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow." 

Thus spoke the man who loved his fellow-men, whose heart 
beat in sympathy with them in their suffering, and whose 
hand was ever readv to assist in their distress. 



":> 



148 Memorial Addresses: Representative Cushnian 

My friend is gone. His life of forty-two years, though short, 
was long enough to demonstrate the possibilities of honest and 
well-directed efforts in our Republic. Born to poverty, he 
fought its battles and achieved honor and fame. Having 
attained greatness, he despised not his low estate. True to him- 
self, he could not be false to any man. His life is a star of 
hope to every poor, struggling lad of this Republic, pointing 
the way to that success which comes through energy, industry, 
perseverance, honesty, and a faithful adherence to the right. 

His love for mankind and his confidence in it, his intense 
love for his country and its institutions, and his reverence for 
its flag inspired ennobling and patriotic impulses in all who 
came in contact with him. His kindness, his love, his achieve- 
ments, and his triumphs are a precious memory to his loving 
wife, mother, and brother, who mourn his departure. To have 
enjoyed his friendship I count a priceless heritage. 



LbWr 



